Leaving Pandora is hard to do
by CGAdam
Summary: After destroying the moonbase, there was a simple plan to get back into space and start hunting the Vaults 'out there.' Now, nothing matters but rescuing Gaige. All characters, Action, Adventure, Fun, Borderlands-style humor
1. Press B to skip

So, here we are once again. Right now, we are drifting in the black of space. Behind us, the glow of a volcanic moon. Before us, a violent, deadly, bandit-ridden planet, home to the most dangerous souls ever created by humanity... and those some would call its greatest heroes. From our vantage point in the heavens, we can look down on the planet, but we cannot hear its commotion.

But what if we could?

Let's imagine that, for just a moment. Let's believe that we _can_ hear the people below us, so many miles away. What would we hear? Gunfire and cursing, for certain. But also...

...is that singing?

Down we go, closer to the planet, nearer to those below us. And yes, it _is_ singing. Not beautiful singing, of course; this is Pandora, where beauty goes sour, and violence is a treacherous queen. But it is happy; elated, even. Where is it coming from?

Everywhere. From the tiny, formerly plague infused town of Overlook, to the sprawling crater of Badassitude, and even in the barren wastes of the Dust, there is loud, raucous, drunken, and, typical for Pandora, violent celebration. As we draw even closer to the planet, we can hear that the loudest noises of ecstasy are coming from a tiny floating city. You'd never guess a few hundred people could cheer so loudly, they could shatter a satellite.

For that is why they cheer. That is why they celebrate. Turn around. Stare towards the moon, and see the source of their joy.

Between the planet and the moon, a symbol of oppression. Of terror. Of greed and arrogance... formerly. Now, it is a monument to heroism. The once mighty "H" of Hyperion, its moonbase, is destroyed. The all-seeing, robot spewing evil eye is dead, broken and dark. Fire erupts from one of the legs of the station as its air billows out. Once it floated steadily, easily resisting the pull of Pandora's moon. Soon, however, it will fall to the fiery surface, and burn into obscurity.

But let us turn away from that ruined place for now. Our story is not about the place, but the people who demolished it. They have their names, of course. But on Pandora, to its people, and to you, my friend, they are still called the Vault Hunters. What will they do now, that Pandora is free?

...do you want to find out?

* * *

[Yep. I'm a 360 player.]


	2. Gunshots always help MY hangovers

"Oh, good _god,_" Axton groaned in half pain, half revelry, "I haven't partied that hard since my unit liberated Hedonista IV."

"We did all warn you about not trying to out drink _everyone_ in Sanctuary," Maya chided, smirking at her incapacitated comrade. She was seated at the Sanctuary Archive holo-table, while Axton was sprawled on the balcony floor, an icepack sitting on his forehead.

"And I told _you_, it was free drinks until I passed out!" Axton insisted. "What was I supposed to do, say no?"

"Maybe not, but you didn't have to drink _everything_ that got pushed into your hand," Maya retorted. "I'm still pretty sure Salvador got you to drink actual lighter fluid."

"Maya, how can you think that!" Salvador protested, putting on his best 'wounded pride' face. "I'd never make _mi hermano_ drink that swill." A devilish grin crossed his face. "A paint thinner and gasoline cocktail, on the other hand..."

Maya just rolled her eyes and decided not to fight this particular battle any more. "Have you two seen the others? Lilith wants to get this meeting started in a few minutes."

"Krieg should be coming down from the roof anytime, now that it's calmed down a little," Axton said, moving his ice pack from one eye to the other. "Gotta say, for a crazy man, I thought he'd party more."

"I don't think he trusted himself around all that lunacy," Maya replied. "What about Zero? Gaige?"

"...I am telling you, you crazy old lady, this _will_ work!"

"And I am telling _you_, you puffed up little girl, it will not!"

"It _will!_ A Hecker circuit re-integrator tied into the digistruct matrix will work!"

"That is grossly incompetent, and highly unstable!"

Salvador peered over the balcony, crossed his arms, and grinned. "That'd be everyone else now." He cupped his hands around his mouth. "Come on down, _amigo!" _he shouted at the hunched figure on the roof. "Time to get busy!"

Axton grimaced and pressed the icepack over both eyes. "Would you kindly shut your mouth?"

Salvador leaned next to Axtron's ear, his grin widening. "OF COURSE, BUDDY! HAPPY TO HELP YOU RECOVER FROM THAT _SPLITTING HEADACHE!_"

Axton gingerly exposed one eye and glared at Salvador. "I hate you so much."

"Pah! I figured a big bad commando like you could take a little more than that!"

"I can take a lot," Axton grunted, pushing himself into a sitting position, back resting on the balcony wall. "So what's that say about how much fun I had compared to you, if I'm like this and you're still moving?"

"I guess," Salvador replied, plopping down next to him, "that you're getting soft in your old age."

"_My_ old age? You've got ten years on me, _grandpa_."

"So why am I the one still walking, _hermano?_"

"Settle that one on your own time," Lilith said, walking in. "We've got some business to discuss."

"Does it have anything to do with _them_?" Maya asked with a grin, pointing over Lilith's shoulder. The sounds of Tannis and Gaige were getting louder as they grew closer.

"It's got _everything _to do with them," Mordecai groused, walking and grabbing a seat in the corner. "They haven't stopped arguing in technobabble for the past hour."

Anything else he might have said next was drowned out as Gaige and Tannis walked into briefing room, arguing heatedly. Maya caught a few words of the debate, but not enough to follow the substance of it. They kept half-shouting and talking over each other as Brick and Zero walked in, Krieg swung down from the roof, and everyone settled in for whatever Lilith wanted to discuss.

Lilith half-leaned against, half-sat on the holotable, rubbing at the bridge of her nose in the universal manner of vexed and overstressed people. Finally, when everyone else had made themselves reasonably comfortable, she cleared her throat. "If I could have your attention, girls?"

Tannis and Gaige ignored her and kept arguing.

"Hey!" Lilith half-shouted. "I am _talking _to you two!"

Gaige had dropped a hand to her hammer, and Tannis was full-on shouting by now.

Lilith shook her head in frustration. "Well, screw this." She unholstered a pistol and fired a shot out the balcony door.

The argument ceased.

"Now that I've got your attention," she started dryly, "we have some plans to make."

"Maybe we can do it without more gunfire over my head?" Axton said. "This ain't my worst hangover, but that can change if we start shooting inside our own base."

"What's this about, Lil?" Maya asked quickly.

"The future," she replied. "With the space station destroyed, now is our best chance to get off planet and start hunting the other vaults."

There was a few seconds pause as they also considered. "Makes sense," Axton said finally, pushing himself off the balcony floor. "Hyperion can't funnel all the incoming and outgoing traffic through that station anymore. Ships can take off from anywhere on the planet now."

"Are we sure it's safe, though?" Maya asked. "Sanctuary still doesn't even have a shield. Hyperion could always come back."

"Let 'em try!" Brick crowed, slamming one fist into his palm.

"We'll blow them back to space _again_!" Salvador declared.

"I don't think they'll bother," Lilith replied, shaking her head. "They may have made a ton of money off Pandora at first, but Jack was the one driving all the operations here. Now he's dead, his pet projects have failed, and they just lost their final large scale investment here. I can't imagine that the higher-ups are going to keep throwing money at this planet."

"Wouldn't be the first time a multi-planet corporation gave up on Pandora," Axton pointed out. "First Dahl, then Atlas, and now Hyperion. This place is bad news for big investors."

"There's always someone that thinks they can do better than the last guy," Maya cautioned.

"But there _isn't_ any reason to think it'll be soon," Lilith said, "Awakening the Warrior didn't cause anything like the spread of Eridium from the first Vault, so there's no immediate big money this time."

"No to mention what's been going on in the past two months," Mordecai pointed out. "Two major blows to the corporate overlords from the meek little peasants is bound to make anyone else looking at this place a little skittish."

Lilith nodded. "That all means it's _our_ time to act, before word of the other Vaults leaks offworld." She straightened up. "Which brings me to the main point: we need a ship."

There was a moment's silence as the group considered her statement. "Obviously, you're not talking about the type of passenger ships we all arrived in," Maya finally said, her tone speculative.

"Obviously," Lilith agreed. "Those might get us out of the system, but we need something that's _ours_, that we can take wherever we want."

"Should've stolen something while we were taking out the space station," Salvador commented. "Those _pendajos_ would've had plenty to spare."

"We'd never have gotten one out," Gaige disagreed. She still sounded a little miffed, but at least she wasn't glaring at Tannis anymore. "A station like that keeps its ships on lockdown unless they're about to be flown. And a control freak like Jack would've added even more safeguards, I'd bet on it."

"What about Mr. Torgue?" Brick suggested. "He likes you guys, and he owns a big gun company. He could buy us a ship."

"Torgue's... in a little trouble with his shareholders," Maya said hesitantly. "I'm not sure he actually _does_ have enough money to buy a ship like we're talking about."

"What _are_ we talking about?" Mordecai pointed out. "If we're not too picky, we've got a ship right now."

Lilith sighed in exasperation. "We already talked about that. Sanctuary can barely fly right _now_, we'd never get it spaceworthy."

"Not after a couple decades of sitting in the ground," Gaige agreed. "Besides, what about all the people that live here? We can't take them with us, and we can't just force them out of their homes so we can take their city treasure hunting."

Mordecai grunted. "When you put it that way, it does sound a little too much like a Hyperion move."

"So what's our option?" Axton asked. "Take a public liner out of the system and try to buy a new ship on some other planet? We've picked up some money during our adventures, but it's not enough to buy something up on the open market. And I know_ I_ can't exactly apply for a loan in the 'civilized' galaxy."

Lilith smiled a little. "Actually, Zero gave us an idea."

Most of the heads in the room looked at the silent figure, leaning in the shadows with his arms crossed. "Well, go on, buddy," Axton finally said. "Don't keep us in suspense."

Zero didn't change his pose, just spoke two words. "The _Terminus._"

Maya looked doubtful. "The _H.S.S. Terminus_? Professor Nakayama's starship?"

He nodded.

Salvador burst out laughing. "I think something shook loose in that helmet of yours, _compadre,_" he chuckled. "That thing was more busted than a skag after eating a grenade. There's no way we can get it flying."

"Which brings us to the brainiacs' argument," Mordecai said dryly. "They think we can rebuild it."

"You're kidding," Axton snorted. "How do you repair a ship that's broken into thirds?"

"Trying listening more carefully," Tannis snapped. "We're not going to repair that ship. We're going to build a copy of it."

Axton glanced at Zero. "Was _this_ your idea, too?"

To his surprise, Zero nodded again. "Digistruct Peak."

Now there was an even longer silence as the others tried to digest that thought. "Would that actually _work_?" Maya wondered. "I mean, we've all seen complicated equipment digistructed. We even use the tech for our gear. But can we actually digistruct a four hundred foot long _starship_?"

"Absolutely," Gaige put in quickly. "There are a few hurdles, though. Right now, Digistruct Peak only makes hardlight constructs. We'd need to use Eridium to make a permanent, physical object."

"Like the gun crates," Maya pointed out.

"Yes, but a _lot_ more of it," Gaige said. "Like, maybe into the tons."

"Tough, but doable," Mordecai put in. "There's no shortage of it. We can probably raid the abandoned Hyperion plants without any real trouble."

"So, there's the matter problem," Gaige went on. "Then there's the actual assembly of a complicated machine like a starship, but that's still workable." Now she _was_ glaring at Tannis again. "_If _you make sure the emitters stay synched up as the ship is built. And the best way to do that-"

"-is _not_ with Hecker circuits!" Tannis interrupted.

"Yes, it _is!_ They're the only device that can handle all the data streams at once!"

"They are an inelegant, clumsy, brute force approach to digistruct matrix technology, and will not be used in my training ground!" Tannis bristled. "And they blow up!"

"Only if you-"

"GggrrraaAAAAAAAAAHHHH!"

The strangled roar broke off the argument. Krieg had lurched up, buzz axe clenched in his massive paw of a hand. "Enough from the hounds!" he snarled. "They growl and howl, and we're all still chained to ground! Chew through the leash, and _then_ shred the cats!"

Maya blinked. "As crazy and convoluted as that was, he's right." She turned back to the others. "It's a long way to go before we talk about building the ship. To start with, don't we need to scan whatever we want to create?"

"Not, um... not in this case," Tannis stammered, clearly trying to recover her train of thought. "I mean, we'll need a template, but we don't need total deconstruction for ultimate re-materialization."

Brick raised a hand. "Uh... what?"

"We just need the ship schematics," Gaige explained hastily. "If we can pull the specs out of the _Terminus _computers, we can feed those into Digistruct Peak's mainframe, and then..." she glanced sideways at Tannis, "...assuming we can hammer out the details, construct the ship."

Axton glanced at Brick, smirked, and raised his own hand. "Am I dumb, or does that mean we need to take a trip out to the _Terminus_?"

"Yes, and yes," Gaige teased.

"Right now?"

Lilith shook her head. "No, we're not in _that_ much of a rush."

"Great. Wake me when we're ready to roll. I'm gonna go throw up and pass out."

"I'll help," Salvador said cheerfully.

* * *

[The most interesting thing to me is that there's apparently a whole star system called Hedonista. New chapters to follow once a week.]


	3. Splish splash, I was havin' a bash

[You know, I did a tour on a planet called Precipita III once,] Axton remarked, voice tinny over Zero's ECHO unit. [I was there six months. It rained all day, every day.]

[Oh, really?] Maya asked distractedly.

[Yep. Hard rain, soft rain, _sideways_ rain... it never stopped. I _still_ have socks that aren't dry.]

[Is there a point to this?] Gaige asked, her tone irritated.

Even from five hundred yards away, Zero caught the motion as Axton pointed his gun at the sky. [Just that this is now the second time I've ever been that drenched.]

Despite the fact he was right, and all six Vault Hunters were trudging through Candlerakk's Cragg in a near-torrential downpour, the ECHO chatter amused and comforted Zero. As long as they were griping about the weather, nobody was under attack.

Four of the Hunters were moving forward in a loose diamond formation. Salvador was on point, Axton covering the rear, with Maya and Gaige each holding a flank. It was a solid formation, with an added layer of protection.

Zero and Krieg were running constant circles around their friends, scouting for any of the numerous threats the continent of Aegrus liked to throw at its visitors. Any aggressors were going to have to get past their picket line first, and neither of the powerful melee-oriented fighters was willing to let _that_ happen.

So far, however, it was proving very quiet.

Zero didn't like it. When a place like Pandora, and especially Aegrus the Death Continent, _stopped_ sending trouble your way, there was usually a very unpleasant reason for it.

Gaige was apparently feeling similar. [Is it me, or is this too easy?]

[You mean the complete and total lack of slavering beasts or crazed tribesmen? Yeah, I caught that,] Axton replied dryly.

[It's making my trigger finger itch,] Salvador complained. [Point man is supposed to see some _action_.] His next words didn't come over the radio; they echoed throughout the entire canyon. "_Come on out, pendejos! Say hello to my little friends!_"

Considering the distance, the volume on Salvador's shout was pretty impressive. Normally, a challenge roared like that could summon a chubby enemy from behind a skinny tree in a desert. This time...nothing.

[Ok, this is really getting _weird_,] Gaige said. [Krieg, Zero? Are you guys seeing anything out there?]

"All quiet ahead, With no resistance noted," Zero radioed back. "To my eyes, you're clear."

[Thanks, Z. Krieg?]

No answer.

[Krieg? Krieg, are you there?]

Nothing but static.

Zero broke into a full sprint, gunning hard for the _Terminus_ crash site. The patrol pattern the pair had been running would've put Krieg right near the entrance to the ship. If something up there had attacked him, they would've heard his battle cries throughout the canyon. If it had been enough to put up a decent fight, there would've been even _more _noise.

But for Krieg to be completely unresponsive, with no sound at all...

None of his friends really knew how fast Zero could be. By the time Gaige made her third radio call, Zero was at the break in the path leading to either the ship or the now-empty lair of Voracidous. When Axton tried his a few seconds later, Zero was vaulting off the roof of a dilapidated shack, and barely touching the ground as he rounded the final bend to the _Terminus_.

At Maya's call almost immediately after, he was standing completely still, next to Krieg, as they both stared at the clearing in front of them.

Zero managed to tap Krieg's shoulder. "Answer."

The big man, not taking his eyes of the scene in front of them, nodded and spoke into his ECHO. "I'm... here, pretty lady."

[Thank god,] Maya said, relief in her voice. [Where are you? Didn't you hear us calling? We were worried.]

"Found out why the butcher's zoo was closed," Krieg said. "Going to visit the bushes and say hi to lunch now."

[What?]

"Hurry and arrive," Zero said. Krieg wouldn't be able to answer for a few minutes. "Feel free to holster your guns. You've no need for them."

[Zero? Is that you? Where are you? What do you mean?]

"Hurry," he said again, and shut down his ECHO.

* * *

Maya frowned at her now silent comm device. "That was weird."

"Running theme for the day," Axton said. "Come on, Sal, let's pick it up. I'm starting to feel a little exposed out here."

"What do you think that was all about?" Gaige wondered. "They actually sounded... freaked out. What could rattle _those _two?"

"We'll find out in a minute," Axton said. They were coming up on the final split in the path.

Salvador paused, sniffing the air. "Do you smell that?"

For a second, Gaige didn't know what he was talking about. Then the wind shifted ever so slightly, and she caught the scent. "Ugh, god, what did you _eat__?!_"

"Wasn't me, _chica,_" he protested. "That's coming from up ahead, whatever it is."

"It's pretty rancid," Maya coughed. "And it's getting stronger."

She was right. As they got closer, the smell started to turn downright nauseating. By the time they crossed the bridge over the gulf, Gaige was trying not breathe through her mouth. Barely a hundred feet later, she gave up and slung her shotgun, and was holding her nose shut with her mechanical fingers in a desperate attempt to block the vilely scented air. Then they rounded the corner to the _Terminus,_ and Gaige dropped her hand in astonishment.

The clearing was filled with a pyramid of bodies.

Gaige ran her eyes over it in mesmerized horror. The bottom layer looked like scaylions, then boroks, then stalkers, and finally, a tangle of arms and shields and masks-

The next thing Gaige knew, she was on her knees at the cliff edge, dimly aware of a heaving in her gut. It was another minute before she could lean back.

"You three okay now?"

Axton's voice was coming from right behind her. Gaige didn't turn around, but she did note that Maya was on her left, wiping her own mouth. About ten feet to her right was Krieg, re-settling his mask to its normal position. Gaige stared in unsteady surprise. "That got _you_?"

She felt a hand on her shoulder. "Come on. Zero's getting the door open. The sooner we get out of this air, the better."

As soon as Axton said that, Gaige became painfully aware of the all-penetrating stench again, and just barely managed to hold down what was left of her stomach contents. "God, yes."

Less than a minute later, everyone was crowded into the _Terminus' _airlock. Zero and Salvador had forced the doors shut, and the smell was greatly diminished- compared to outside, at least. "I don't get it," Gaige said finally, slumped against the wall. "What could have done that? More importantly, why_ would_ they? That had to have taken _hours._"

"Beyond bizarre," Maya agreed, sitting next to her. "Pandora's heavy on murder and killing, and no stranger to insanity, but that looked... ritualistic. Almost like a serial killer's handiwork."

Gaige cast a wary eye over Maya. "How do you know that? Should I check your room for piles of bodies?"

"I read a lot," she retorted. "What about it, Sal? Ever heard of something like that?"

Salvador shrugged. "Nah. Like you said, who's got the time?"

Zero stepped up and handed a small, wrapped item to Gaige. "Here."

Gaige accepted the quarter-sized circle of foil with a small frown. "Is this a _mint?_"

Zero nodded and handed one to Maya and Krieg each. "A little something To remove the harsh burn of Your stomach gone bad."

Gaige couldn't help but give a wan smile. "For those random occasions when something makes you toss your cookies?" She popped the candy into her mouth, relaxing a little. She had to admit, it _was _helping settle her stomach.

"Hang on a second," Maya protested, looking at the others suspiciously. "That got to me, Gaige, and _Krieg_, of all people, but not you three?" She crunched the mint, a mixture of embarrassment and irritation on her face. "What's your secret?"

Zero tapped his faceplate. "No nose."

"Lucky you," Gaige put in dryly. "How about you two?"

"I've smelled worse," Axton said curtly, his face dark.

"What? _Where?_"

Gaige realized her mistake a half second after she said it. A thick, uneasy silence filled the small corridor.

"Reminded me of the holidays," Salvador said brightly.

Five heads turned towards him. "What?"

"Really! It smelled like _mi abuela's _house on Mercenary Day."

Maya had to laugh. "You're just kidding with us."

"No, honest! I can still hear her caroling while she decorated." To everyone's mildly horrified amusement, he cleared his throat and started to sing. "Deck_ the halls with bandit entrails, bang ba-bang ba-bang, ba-bang bang BOOM! _See_ them run from missile contrails, bang ba-bang ba-bang, ba-bang bang BOOM!"_

Krieg joined in. "Don_ we now our _kill_ing clothing_-"

"_Enough!_" Gaige clambered up, laughter fighting with exasperation in her tone. "Let's just get the stupid plans and go _home_. Which way to Nakayama's lab?"

"That way." Zero took point, crouching down as he entered a duct. Gaige followed quickly. Salvador went next, still humming quietly.

"Nice tenor," Maya whispered to Krieg before they ducked into the crawl space.

Axton didn't move right away. He stared beyond the door, into his own mind and at things he had hoped to never dwell on again.

"Ax! Come on!"

Maya's voice shook him out of his reverie. "Right, coming!" A few seconds later, he dropped down next to her... and into waist-deep water. "Gah! What the hell?!"

"The hold _has _been open to the sky since before the last time we were here," Maya pointed out. "That was what, a month ago?"

"Fantastic," Axton growled. "Now I have boxers that won't dry to go with my socks." He spotted Gaige slogging through the water, Zero keeping pace at her side. "Hey, Mechromancer! Where do we go next?"

"Up there," Gaige yelled back, pointing to the second level. "Right near the weapon hold from last time. There were two or three computers in there; I should be able to pull up the ship schematics on any of 'em."

"Perfect," he griped. "You do realize that's a good ten feet straight up? And the light bridge is out?"

She shot him an annoyed glance. "Relax. The anchor projector points are down here. They're underwater, but I can still trigger them safely."

"You're sure you can even get power to that?" Axton challenged. "This ship hasn't had a working power plant in months."

"The batteries would hold a charge for almost a year, even if the ship was parked normally and actually drawing energy," Gaige said testily. "With all the systems either offline or shut down, there's no reason think to they've drained since the last time we were here." She stopped and glared at him. "You done? I need to go underwater to get to the anchors."

Axton turned away, rifle held loosely. "Just... let's just do this."

Gaige huffed irritably, then pulled off her shotgun and held it out to Zero. "Hang to this for me. I don't wanna submerge it." Zero took the gun, flashing her an encouraging ;) across his helmet. Gaige dropped her goggles over her eyes, sucked in a deep breath, and ducked underwater.

Krieg and Maya had taken up positions on either side of Axton. Zero took a few steps forward, standing guard next to Krieg. Salvador stood shoulder to hip with Zero, completing the circle of Vault Hunters surrounding their friend. He glanced at Gaige's ripply image. "Do welding goggles block water?"

Before anyone could answer, there was a brief flash, and the light ramp began to manifest. Gaige broke the water's surface with a loud gasp. "I _told_ you it'd work."

"You did at-" Maya broke off as the digistruct pillars all across the hold sprang to life, projecting mechanical forms into the air. "Oh, crap."

Gaige pushed up her goggles and looked around in despair. "That can't happen! Those systems aren't even linked!"

"Well, it _did_ happen!" Axton's rifle snapped towards the nearest materializing figure, but he still spared her an angry look. "What did you _do_?"

"She brought the party!" Salvador crowed. "_Gracias, amiga!_"

"I _didn't_ do it!" Gaige insisted.

"Blame is not needed; Anger, counterproductive," Zero said, tossing Gaige her shotgun. "Get ready to fight."

"No," Axton said tightly. "We need to get out of this water. Those are WAR loaders."

Everyone's guns went a little higher. "Maya, you think you can phaselock 'em?" Gaige asked, her tone uneasy.

"Not all of them," Maya, her voice tense. "Axton, turrets?"

"Water's too deep," he said grimly. "And I reconfigured for missiles this morning, so wall mounting isn't an option."

"Let the fleet of foot And the strong of arm stand firm. _We've_ got this covered." Zero's sword flashed into existence, and he leapt out of the water, running vertically on a support beam.

Krieg laughed maniacally and waved his buzz axe. "Blankets are on me, sweeties!" He didn't bother leaping. He simply charged at the nearest materializng loader, churning the water into froth and moving like it wasn't even there.

"Up the ramp, while they buy us time!" Axton ordered. "We can offer support fire from the second level!"

"Not 'til _my_ boy joins the party!" Gaige yelled. "_Sic 'em, Deathtrap!_" With a retina-searing blaze of light, Gaige's creation flashed into existence.

Krieg could overpower the water around his legs. Zero could dodge it. To the clawed, laser blasting, lightning-spewing killbot with a penchant for melee attacks, it didn't even matter. The three mobile fighters fell on the WAR loaders like lions on gazelle.

"Lay on, Macduff!" Krieg roared. He brought his axe down, sparks flew, and suddenly a loader was down half its firepower. Krieg seized the damaged unit, hoisting it over his head. "You are _dead, _Horatio!" He hurled the loader at one of its fellows, destroying both in a fiery blast.

Zero wall-ran up to the second level balcony and went into a slide, right under a newly formed loader. He slashed sideways, and the loader staggered, its right leg gone. Zero rolled up and off the balcony, cloaking and throwing a handful of kunai as he did. They exploded against the loader's eye, and Zero went after his next target. His leap carried him sword-first into another bot, skewering its power core. Zero barely hesitated, jumping away in a half second, and both machines detonated.

One of the WAR loaders took aim at Deathtrap and started charging its guns. Before it could fire, Deathtrap lashed out with its heat laser, striking the still-arming weapons. The rounds exploded unlaunched, and one more loader was out of the fight. The shockwave staggered another, and Deathtrap took advantage, slicing it to ribbons.

Six loaders had been destroyed in less than two minutes, but there were still eight left, and more were spawning. Krieg hurled his axe, burying it another loader's head and disabling the machine, but he failed to notice one materialize behind him. The machine swung its guns in a clumsy melee attack, and Krieg went flying into the water. Its weapons started to charge-

Zero's katana lodged in the loader's skull. It collapsed, but Zero had thrown his blade from second level catwalk, and didn't have time to retrieve it- another loader had started firing at him. He was on the defensive, trying to outrun the missiles, but his cloak was recharging and he was running out of room on the catwalk-

He jumped.

Deathtrap caught Zero mid-air, and flung him at the loader with Krieg's buzz axe sticking out of its head. Zero grabbed the handle, and his momentum was enough to let him wrench it free as he sailed past. He rebounded off the nearest wall, leaping into the air.

Krieg pushed himself out of the water, looking for the nearest enemy. He saw the loader Zero had saved him from, the katana still embedded in its head. Krieg seized the hilt, pulled the blade free, and brought it down on another loader that was trying to charge its guns. Krieg saw Zero across the cargo hold, crushing a loader's head with his axe.

"Nil!" he yelled. "Trade!" He flung the katana at him.

Zero caught sight and threw the axe at Krieg-

A missile barrage flashed, and both weapons vanished. Krieg and Zero had just enough time to see a WAR loader shift its aim, and then the fire caught up to them. The explosion threw both fighters into the deeper water, off-balance and shields down. The loader was on them in a second, charging for a full-scale barrage-

There was a flash of blue light, and their shields recharged just as the loader fired. Deathtrap kept pouring on the shield energy, blocking the worst of the missile barrage from hitting either of them, but leaving himself open to attack. A second loader targeted its guns, and Deathtrap took a full volley to the chest.

The recharge beam died out.

[Interference eliminated.] The first loader's guns glowed as it recharged its weapons, point blank from the staggered warriors. [Eradicating targets.]

"_Shut up_."

A sphere of energy flared around the loader, and it suddenly levitated, immobile and unable to fire. Maya, staring down at the battlefield from the second level, clenched her fist. The energy field tightened, and the loader exploded. "_No one_ hurts my friends."

"They gave us cover, boys and girls!" Axton bellowed. "Let's return the favor!" He pulled his rocket launcher and fired, obliterating yet another loader.

Salvador roared with laughter. "Eat lead, _pendejos!_" Twin miniguns raked the field, shredding robotic limbs and scattering parts everywhere.

"Make _me _look bad, will ya?!" Gaige yelled, adding her shotgun fire to the fray.

The machines never had a chance to go back on the offensive. Loaders staggered and fell, shredded by the combined fire. In a matter of seconds, nothing was left standing.

Salvador pumped his guns in the air enthusiastically. "I am all that is man!"

Axton looked down, launcher balanced on his shoulder, a smug expression on his face. "You said it, Sal. Nice work."

Zero cautiously raised his head from under the water. "Done?"

"Looks like it," Maya said, panning her gun across the digistruct pylons. "Nothing else is spawning, anyway. You two alright? Any injuries?"

"No."

"Fresh as mountain sheep!"

"Deathtrap's okay," Gaige reported, checking the status indicator on her ECHO device. "Just de-corporealized. I can reconstruct him in a few minutes if we need to."

"Hopefully we won't-" Maya broke off. "What was that?"

It took a few seconds for the others to catch it. Then the sound began to fill their ears: a rhythmic _thud, thud, thud..._ echoing through the ship's battered hull, rippling the water.

And it was getting stronger.

* * *

[To me, slashes are/Visually distracting/So I don't use them.]

[To be fair, I'm sure I would've puked, too.]

[Thank you for reading. See you next time!]


	4. Rub dub, just a-fightin' in a tub

Salvador frowned in confusion, staggering slightly as the impacts shuddered throughout the hull. "What's that? Something turning on?"

"We destroyed everything that turns on," Axton bit out. He panned his weapon around the cargo bay. "Can anyone tell where it's coming from?"

Maya had her eyes closed, listening. "I'd almost swear it's coming from outside the ship, except..."

"Except there's nothing out there except cliff face," Gaige finished. The pounding was still continuing, and growing louder. "So where-"

A piercing shriek of rending metal shattered the air, and the most powerful impact yet rocked the ship. The deck pitched forward sharply, throwing the others off the balcony and back into the water.

Gaige came up for air, sputtering. She found herself staring up at the ceiling, and there were suddenly what looked like gray tree trunks tipped with rock sticking through the metal. They seemed to flex-

"_Fingers?_"

Half the remaining cargo hold bulkhead vanished, ripped away and hurled into the distance, and the Vault Hunters found themselves staring at a creature almost as big as the Eridian Warrior. It roared at them, foul smelling breath filling the air and spewing bits of purple slime-

"_Look out!_"

A massive forearm came smashing down, punching through the roof like it were paper. The creature was too big to actually get into the cargo hold, but its was vicious enough to try. The creature kept tearing at the ship, trying to rip enough of the metal away to get at the small band of fighters.

Gaige didn't notice if anyone had gotten crushed. She just opened fire, shooting wildly at the thing's face, its arms, anywhere that looked like a target.

Fortunately, it was big enough that everything _was_ a target.

She wasn't firing alone for long, either. Maya's SMG joined in, then Axton's rifle. Zero started taking precise, rapid shots with a bayoneted sniper rifle. Krieg had opened up with his rarely used firearm, the biggest, nastiest, most rusted hunk of metal ever to spew a bullet. Salvador was firing two-handed, both weapons hurling lead. The air was thick with gunsmoke and the smell of cordite.

Unfortunately, all their fire only seemed to aggravate it. The monster roared again, ignoring the bullets it must have swallowed, and lurched forward, snapping its train car sized jaws at them.

"_The left arm! Shoot the left arm!_"

Gaige couldn't tell who actually shouted the order, but nobody questioned. Seven guns shifted to the weight-bearing limb, blasting in a desperate attempt to make the creature lose its grip. The thing slammed its right arm down, smashing through more of the roof. Water cascaded around them, and inexplicably, their own bullets started ricocheting everywhere. Gaige flinched as her shield indicator flashed a warning-

There was an abrupt, focused explosion at the creature's right eye. It shrieked in pain, clutching at the bleeding eye socket with both hands-

-and fell out of the ship.

Salvador blinked and lowered his guns. "Where'd big and ugly go?"

"The fastball special Has earned us a little time," Zero said, slipping another grenade from his belt, "But it _can't_ be dead."

"Not from that little blast," Axton growled. "It'll be back up the cliff in a second, and _royally _pissed."

"What _is_ that thing?" Gaige gasped. "What the _hell_ is it?!"

"I think it's a bullymong," Maya said in disbelief, "but I've never seen one that _big_."

"Whatever it is, it's coming back!" Salvador yelled. He was standing at the edge of the hole in the ship, staring down the cliff face. "We've got maybe two minutes!"

Axton looked at the others. "Any ideas?"

"Shoot while he's climbing," Maya suggested. "Maybe we can kill it before it gets here."

"Our best shots couldn't scratch that thing at point-blank range!"

"Blast it off the cliff?"

"We all know it'd just keep coming. Besides, I don't think we can destroy enough rock face to slow its climb."

"Concentrate fire," Zero suggested. "All of our strength at one point Might just be enough."

"We already tried that!"

"Maybe we just didn't try hard enough," Gaige said quickly. "Axton, give me your ECHO."

"What?"

"Your ECHO! I've got an idea, but there's not much time!"

"Are you nuts?!" Axton yelped. "That's got all my combat data in it! You mess that up and I could lose all my turret skills!"

"If you _don't_ give it to me, we're not getting out of here alive!" Gaige shouted.

"Decide fast, _hermano!_" Salvador yelled, retreating from the cliff edge. "He's comin' up quick!"

Axton hesitated another half second, gritted his teeth and slapped the device into Gaige's hand. "Make it fast."

Gaige hooked the device to her mechanical arm and started typing something on her own ECHO unit. "This should just take a minute..."

"Here it comes!"

Thick, gnarled, clawed fingers dug into the floor of the cargo hold. "Gaige..."

"Thirty seconds! Cover me!"

The bullymong's massive left arm appeared.

"Gaige!"

"Ready!" She held her hand out. "Follow Deathtrap's lead!" Her fist clenched, and Deathtrap flared into existence. Normally, the floating killing machine was intimidating enough, between the spikes all over its body and the bladed hand. This time...

Axton stared in disbelief. "Did you fuse my turrets to your robot's arms?!_"_

"Missile pods and all." Gaige grinned. "_Kill it, boy!_"

Deathtrap unleashed a hail of fire that could have leveled a city. His innate laser and lightning shot forth, burning and blasting at the impenetrable hide. Twin turrets, each with twin guns and dual missile pods threw enough destructive power to kill a battalion of enemies at the giant bullymong's left shoulder. It took a swipe at Deathtrap with its right arm, but the robot dodged out of the way and continued the relentless assault.

"_Fire! Fire now!_"

Seven guns once more added fire to fray, pounding its thick hide in concert with Deathtrap's onslaught. The creature bellowed in pain and confusion, unable to block all the fire or kill the attackers. Deathtrap pressed the advantage, flying in closer to the bullymong-

The armor cracked.

Gaige didn't actually see what happened next. The creature was obscured by smoke and debris when a horrifying sound, a wailing, raging shriek, echoed around them. A few seconds later she realized Deathtrap had stopped firing, and released her own trigger. Gradually, everyone stopped shooting and the smoke began to clear.

The bullymong's left arm up to the shoulder was still in front of them. The rest of the creature was gone.

Gaige let out a shaky sigh and collapsed to the deck, ignoring the water that came up to her chest. "I... I don't think it's coming back from _that_."

Maya walked cautiously up to the edge of the ship and chanced a look down. She flinched back quickly, grimacing. "Nope, not coming back. He didn't catch himself that time."

Krieg joined her and whistled. "Grenade in the sauce pot again."

"That was _you?! _I was finding spaghetti sauce everywhere for a week!"

Axton looked over Deathtrap as the bot flew back to Gaige's side. "Interesting tactic."

"A killer robot gunzerking with missile turret mounted, slag-spewing dual chain guns," Salvador said. He sounded odd. "It's... I..."

Maya looked at Salvador in disbelief. "Sal, are you _crying?_"

Salvador sniffed and wiped his nose. "I've never seen anything so beautiful!" he wailed. He dropped to his knees and engulfed Gaige in a bearhug. "Thank you, _mi hermana!_ I'll never forget this!"

Maya laughed as the startled girl patted Salvador's shoulder, clearly uncertain how to escape from her delightedly sobbing friend. Krieg seemed to be laughing under his mask, and even Zero had to flash a :D

Only Axton seemed subdued. He was looking at Deathtrap's arms. "You'll be able to... undo that, right?"

Now Gaige had to laugh. "Of course," she assured him, pushing Salvador off and standing up. "I'll separate their programs when we get back to Sanctuary." Her smile faded as she looked at the monstrous, motionless arm. "Where did that thing _come_ from?"

"No idea," Salvador sniffed. His nose was still running, but he was getting himself back under control. "Bullymongs get big, but that thing was _legendary_. There's never been one like that." He grinned wildly. "For killing that, I say this with more truth than I ever have before: I am _ALL _that is man!"

Maya rolled her eyes. "You goof."

Gaige was running her metal hand over the claws. "It _can't _have been here when we came out the first time. You know Hammerlock would've gone to any lengths to hunt something like this."

Maya joined her. "But something like that doesn't just crop up out of nowhere. It's got to be..." She trailed off. "Gaige, you're wounded!"

"Huh?"

"You've got a hole in your left arm."

"I _do?_" Gaige checked her mechanical forearm, and, to her surprise, found a bullethole a few inches behind the wrist. She held it up to her eye and looked at Maya through it. "Whoa. When did that happen?"

Maya took her hand, examining it. "Maybe you picked up a stray round from Deathtrap's barrage. Or it could have happened during all the ricochets."

"I guess," Gaige admitted. "At least it doesn't hurt." She looked closer. "Uh-oh."

"What is it?"

She gave Axton a sheepish grin. "All of Deathtrap's digistruct circuitry is in this arm. This shot, whenever it got me... weeeell..."

Deathtrap dissolved, but it wasn't the usual smooth, simple dissolution. Random bits of him seemed to explode into fragments of light until there was nothing left.

Gaige sighed. "It nicked the digistruct circuitry. I can't summon Deathtrap until I fix it." Her expression grew a little more embarrassed. "Or give you back your turrets."

A look very close to panic raced over Axton's features. "_What?!_"

"I can still separate the two systems!" Gaige said hastily. "It'll just take me a little longer."

"_How_ long?" he demanded.

"More time than it has to if you keep badgering her," Maya cut in sharply. "Let's get those plans and go home."

"All right, all right. I just hope computers still work after all this," Axton fretted. "Otherwise this whole day will have been for nothing."

"Well, the light ramp is still on. That's a good sign," Gaige pointed out hopefully.

"Yeah." Axton looked out at the others. "You three coming?"

Zero and Krieg were both sloshing around in the shallower, but still semi-deep water, staring down. "Tiger lost his fang!" Krieg shouted back.

"I, too, need my blade. My guns without their sword friend?" Zero shook his head and sighed. "They'd get too lonely."

"Know the feeling," Axton said dryly. "How about you, Sal?"

"Hey, _muchachos!_ Check it out!" Salvador was standing where the giant arm had joined its owner's shoulder. From just the right angle, it looked like... "I've got a _huge _hand!"

Axton just rolled his eyes and went up the ramp. Gaige was already at one of the terminals, sitting on an ammo crate and typing. Maya was leaning over her shoulder, watching. "How's it going?"

"Slowly," Gaige said absently. "I think the data we need is still intact, but I'm having to dig through the whole file system to find it. Nakyama wasn't much for keeping anything other than his Jack research data organized."

"Speaking of which, I was thinking about... Mongzilla, or whatever you want to call it," Maya said.

"'Mongzilla' seems about right," Axton said. "What about it?"

"There is no _way_ we just missed that thing last time around," Maya insisted. "Given that it attacked us in this ship, coupled with the way the security systems inexplicably came on like that... do think Nakyama might still be alive?"

"And he set all this up?" Axton shrugged. "Maybe. He _did_ like to make lethal monsters from the darkest corners of a madman's nightmares."

"By those standards, Mongzilla out there was almost too plain," Gaige quipped. "No sick Jack face anywhere on it, for one thing."

"Do you suppose Jackenstein might've... bred... before we killed it?" Maya asked uneasily. "It was part bullymong, after all."

Gaige stopped typing and made a face. "Ew. Thanks for _that_ mental image."

"No idea," Axton said, ignoring Gaige. "Sal or Hammerlock might know how fast a bullymong grows. We could check with them."

"I wonder if we could check the local fauna concentration," Maya mused. "If we could see how fast the animal population has been decreasing, maybe we could judge how much it's been eating. That would give us a timeline for its growth."

"Even with all the tough critters here, Mongzilla would've been top of the heap," Axton said, nodding. "_Everything_ would've been food."

"And it would've needed a lot to get to that size," Maya went on. "In a few years, it might even..." she trailed off. "Oh, god."

"What?"

"It needed food," Maya said, her tone faint and horrified. "So much food that it cleared out the whole canyon." She looked at Axton with haunted eyes. "That... _mountain_ of bodies out front..."

Axton tried to wrap his head around it. "You think that was its version of a bullymong waste pile?"

"That wasn't waste." Gaige had stopped typing. "All that stuff was intact, like it hadn't even been touched yet." She turned to Maya, starting to look like she might throw up again. "You think someone was _feeding _it."

"_Feeding_ it?!" Axton looked at the arm laying in the cargo hold. "You mean someone slaughtered everyone and everything in this entire canyon to feed some kind of unnatural freak? Who would do that?"

There was a long silence, then Gaige smiled feebly. "You guys haven't taken any jobs from Dr. Zed lately, have you?"

A weak laugh managed to escape all three of them, and the tension dropped a little. Maya patted Gaige's shoulder. "Maybe we'll find out someday, but it's not why we're here right now. Keep looking for the schematics. We're all ready to go home."

"Schematics. Right." Gaige exhaled sharply and returned to her typing. "I was actually almost there...uh... here we go!"

"No kidding?" Axton and Maya both looked at the screen. "How do they look?"

"Not corrupted, if that's what you're worried about," Gaige said. "It's a big file, though. Between the sheer amount of data and the damaged processing speed... I'd say we're looking at about a ten minute file transfer."

"Ten minutes is good," Axton said. "I'll see if our melee fighters found their weapons yet."

"Oh, wait, one more thing!"

Axton paused at the doorway and turned around. "Sure, what?"

"Can you pull one of those talons off the arm? I wanna show Hammerlock."

Axton just stared at Gaige, while Maya covered her mouth with one hand, clearly trying not to laugh. "Really? Hammerlock?"

"How else am I gonna convince him we just took down the biggest bullymong in Pandoran history?"

"We could take a picture," Maya said, the edge of a laugh in her voice.

"That too! Actually, let's do that first! A picture before we deface it for a trophy! And I can show off my war wound while we're at it!" She dashed past Axton, back into the hold. "Hey, guys! Group photo in front of the arm!"

"Awesome idea, _hermana!_"

Axton glanced at Maya, who was now shaking with laughter. "I still say this Hammerlock crush isn't healthy."

"It's harmless," Maya said, walking past. "Besides, this picture will look great framed and hanging next to our wanted posters."

"You realize this means we're walking back into that blasted lake again, right?"

Maya shrugged. "Some things are worth wet feet."

* * *

_[Up from the depths, _

_Thirty stories high,_

_Breathing slag,_

_His head in the sky,_

_MONGZILLA_

_MONGZILLA_

_MONGZILLA_

_MOOOOONGZILLA!]_

*ahem*

[Thank you for reading.]


	5. Nothing in this chapter will ever matter

Axton knocked on the door frame of the Sanctuary Archive's meeting room. "Hey. Can I come in yet, or are you going to throw another wrench at me?"

Gaige spared him a glance laced with amused irritation. Given that most of her left arm seemed to be laid out on the holo-table in front of her, that seemed almost overly courteous. "I only threw that because you bugged me three times in the first half hour, you know."

"So, can I-"

"_Yes_, you can come in now." Gaige pushed his ECHO unit across the holotable. "I finished disentangling our respective digistruct partners a little bit ago."

Axton practically collapsed into a chair with relief. "Oh, good. I was starting to get worried." The biggest weight off his mind, he ran his eyes over the dismantled pieces of Gaige's prosthetic. The forearm plating had been removed, along with a number of small components he didn't recognize. Everything apparently undamaged was laid out carefully across the table. A smaller pile of clearly destroyed pieces were set apart from the rest. "How about your arm? Will it still function?"

Gaige shrugged and probed at a small component in her unshielded forearm. "It functions as an arm, at least. I'm still checking the full extent of the digistruct circuitry damage. Did Zero get back yet?"

"You'd think after five hours he would've given up and come home, but no, he's still at the _Terminus_ looking for his sword." Axton shook his head with a rueful smile. "I never knew a man so attached to his weapons."

"Says the man who calls his turrets 'honey,'" Gaige pointed out.

"She earned it," Axton insisted.

"So has Zero's sword."

"Well, when you put it _that_ way," Axton conceded with a shrug. "What's with your hair?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why are you wearing it down for once? Get tired of looking a six year old?"

Gaige smirked sarcastically and stopped tweaking her arm long enough to pick up one of the metal ties that usually kept her red mop in its distinctive pigtails. "Simple dexterity test. I wanted to see if the motor control was still fine enough to handle the small stuff. If I hadn't been able unscrew my hair clamps, I'd know I had a problem with motive systems _and_ digistruct capability."

"Makes sense." Axton picked up his ECHO unit and started pulling up his turret settings. "So, what's the prognosis for Deathtrap? When can you get him back on the battlefield?"

"Eh, not too long. I need to replace a few minor parts, re-solder a few pathways." She snorted. "I'm just glad the shot went through this part of my arm. It would've been a _whole_ other problem if it went through my upper section."

"Why's that?"

"The forearm is where I keep most of the materialization stuff for Deathtrap. It's basically the equivalent to your turret deck."

"The part that actually 'projects' Deathtrap," Axton said.

"Yeah. But up here..." Gaige tapped just below her shoulder. "That's the actual brains."

Axton grinned a little. "Brains of your arm?"

She shot him a glare without much force. "If I didn't need to make sure I didn't lose anything, I'd throw a bolt at you. Anyway, yes. It's the part of the system that actually determines _how_ Deathtrap gets put together. It organizes the data from my ECHO to make sure he doesn't materialize with an arm where his head should be, or something like that. I can replace all the stuff in my forearm with parts from just about anywhere, but for the shoulder..." Gaige shuddered. "Ugh. It'd be almost impossible to find a replacement Hecker circuit reintegrator out here, and I don't even wanna _think _what it'd cost. Or who I'd have to kill for it."

Axton's brow creased. "Isn't that what you were arguing about with Tannis the other night? Heckler circuits?"

"Hecker, and yes."

"What does _that _do?"

Gaige looked up, a massive grin on her face. "They are _the_ final word in digistruct technology. They can organize and stream data _thousands_ of times faster and more efficiently than anything else out there, meaning you can store and summon something infinitely more complicated than with any other circuit. They're the reason Deathtrap _works_. If I hadn't been able to get my hands on any while I was building Deathtrap, I couldn't have built him the way he is now."

"So what's Tannis' problem with 'em?"

Gaige rolled her eyes, picked up a small gear, and started work on her arm again. "I believe her exact words were, 'they are a brute force, inelegant approach to the fine art of digital construction.' Gah. Let the woman design one little obstacle course, and you'd think she was the Rembrandt of digistructing. She's _completely_ off base!" Gaige slammed her screwdriver on the table and started pacing around the room, waving her arms and raving. "I mean, never _mind _that Hecker circuits are as advanced against other circuits as quantum transistors are against freakin' vacuum tubes! Never _mind_ that you can actually _build a damn _star_ship_ in half the time if you use just _one_! Noooo, just 'cause they get a teeeeeeny tiny bit unstable if you're a total _idiot-_"

"Whoa, whoa!" Axton laughed. "Little heated much?"

"Sorry." Gaige plopped back in her seat with a huff. "I do that sometimes. I can't count how many times my dad had to tell me to watch the volume." She squinted at her arm. "I hope I didn't just throw a part I needed across the room."

"Uh-huh." Axton stopped browsing his turret specs. "Did you say they get 'unstable'?"

"Only if you put 'em in the circuit wrong," Gaige said absently. She was mostly focused on her arm again, the brief spurt of anger gone as fast as it had come. "If you put too few into a unit, they can make the construct unstable and prone to, um..." she scratched her head. "Let's call it 'rapid photonic dispersal'."

"The construct blows up," Axton translated.

Gaige nodded. "On the other hand, if you put too many into a system, and they start drawing power uncontrollably until the circuit _itself_ overheats and blows up. Used correctly, though..." she grinned ferally. "You get Deathtrap."

"And you want to use these things to build our ship up at Digistruct Peak?"

Gaige laughed. "That's the stupid thing. Tannis just blew up at the _mention_ of it. Then I started defending the circuits, and it kinda escalated. I don't even know if we could get enough of them to pull it off. As far I know, there's only five on the planet, and three of them are in my arm."

Axton looked up from his ECHO unit. "No joke? You've got _three_ of these ultra-rare, high performance, impossible to replace circuits in there?"

"How else do you think I got Deathtrap to manifest in half a second when Hyperion needs at least five seconds to finish a much less complicated unit?"

"Huh." He frowned slightly. "What about the other two? Where are they?"

Gaige looked at him in surprise. "You're kidding. You don't know?"

"Should I?"

"Well... yes. They're in your turrets."

Axton stared at her. "Now y_ou're_ kidding. Dahl put unstable circuitry into a mass produced weapon system?"

"_No,_" Gaige stressed. "Dahl put the most advanced circuitry into a field support unit that, in countless campaigns, has never failed to assist its infantry and tip the balance into their mercenaries' favor." She started to put another component back into place. "You should be glad they did. I couldn't have linked up your turrets to Deathtrap without them. And we both know your turrets have saved your life more times than either of us can count."

"Yeah." He shrugged and started to get up. "Whatever. I just hope we don't have to do that again."

"It'll be easier if we ever do."

He froze. "What does _that_ mean?"

"The fusion worked so well, I made it a permanent option. We can link up Deathtrap and your turrets at will."

"I'm... not sure how I feel about that," Axton said hesitantly. "We only did it once, under extreme conditions. Are you sure it's safe to do again?"

"Sure. It's murder on energy requirements, so we can't do it for long." She grinned, an expression tinged with power lust. "But with that much firepower..."

"...we might not _need_ long," Axton finished. "Ok, I can see some advantages there. Just so long as it doesn't make my turrets explode."

"Won't happen," Gaige assured him. "I also set up a secondary option. Your turrets can link up to Deathtrap's targeting systems now. You can deploy your turrets on their own, but they'll be able to piggyback their target lock-ons off of Deathtrap's, or vice versa. In theory, they should _all_ be able to hit the exact same spot from anywhere on the battlefield."

Axton raised an eyebrow, intrigued. "Really? The _exact_ same spot?"

"Within a thousandth of an inch of it," Gaige replied. "We may never need that kind of precision, but it'll be good to have if we ever do."

Axton sat back down. "Lemme get this straight. You performed a force merging of two completely different systems, in the field, during _combat_, then manage to separate them perfectly _and_ end up making lasting improvements to both systems?" He shook his head in amazement. "How the _hell_ did you end up with just third place in that science fair back home?"

"Pretty sure I told you that story," Gaige said dryly. She paused. "Maybe you can tell me one."

"Oh?"

"This afternoon, when you said you'd seen worse than that pile of bodies." She stared at him intently. "Tell me about it."

Axton leaned back, sighing deeply. "Oof. Heavy subject. Why do you want to hear about that?"

Gaige sighed. "We're a tough group of people. We've killed our way across Pandora. We've probably racked up a body count that _exceeds_ what was in that clearing. But at the end of the day, it made three of us lose it over a cliff, and I have a feeling it would've been four if Zero didn't have air filtration in his helmet. Salvador gave us his reason for not puking." She leaned forward, chin resting in her hands. "I wanna know yours."

Axton folded his arms. "It won't help you sleep any better. Might even give you _more _nightmares."

"I had a girl explode on me once, and _today_ was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen," Gaige said sarcastically. "My life outstripped my nightmares a _long_ time ago. Spill."

"Ok, but don't say I didn't warn you." He leaned back and sighed. "It was, oh, eight or nine years back. My unit had been dispatched to some little border planet- I don't even remember its name. The local government had been trying to put down a civilian uprising for over a year, and they were running out of... well, everything."

"So they contracted Dahl to end the conflict in their favor?" Gaige asked, continuing her arm reassembly.

"Yeah." Axton rubbed his face. "I wasn't exactly a rookie at that point, but I hadn't seen anything like the amount of combat time I would over the years. Most of the campaigns I'd been in were quick jobs, things that needed a few extra guns for a few months, and then it was over. This was the first planet I came to that had been through large scale, continuous warfare. When my drop ship landed and the gangway opened, I learned the difference.

"The first big one was the smell."

Gaige's face twisted a little. "Let me guess. Something like the clearing today?"

"Times infinity."

"Did it make _you _puke?" she asked, sounding a little embarrassed.

"No, but probably only because I hadn't eaten _and_ clenched my jaw hard enough to crack a molar." Axton sighed again, fingers tracing the rank insignia tattooed over his eye. "You've got to understand, this planet had been fighting nonstop for a _year_. The insurgency was incredibly widespread. Practically every person that could hold a weapon steady had been pressed into service by the government, or co-opted by the rebels. Cities were outright destroyed, neighborhoods turned into armed outposts, everything totally absorbed by the civil war. Basic services had completely broken down... including corpse disposal. Bodies _everywhere_, just laying where they'd been shot. There were a few places that had tried some kind of clean up, but that mostly consisted of piling the dead and burning them."

"Which didn't help the smell, I'm sure," Gaige remarked grimly. She was staring very intently at the tiny screws in her arm.

"I ended up burning every piece of clothing I brought planetside," Axton admitted. "_And_ trading in all my gear. I couldn't get the stink out."

"How long were you there?"

"The longest three months of my entire career."

She frowned. "Really? I figured a Dahl commando unit would've ended the war in a week."

"Dahl ended up running into bureaucratic interference," Axton said darkly. "Half the time we made a tactical suggestion, it was shot down because the government leaders thought we might damage something they considered 'important'," he growled. "These idiots had been holed up in secure underground bunkers for the entire conflict. They had no idea what the situation was like topside. _Everything_ was destroyed. All they did was keep us from ending the war.

"And that wasn't even the worst of it. They were riding out the war in relative _luxury_ compared to outside. They complained about poor quality food rations that were better than our own supplies, to say nothing of their own forces and civilians. People outside those bunkers would've given anything for just _one_ of those ration packs.

"And the rebels weren't any better. They'd take whatever they could find from anybody, then claim they had the right to it because they were fighting 'for the people'. Never mind that they might've just taken a starving family's last meal." He gave a dry, harsh laugh. "And the worst part? Both sides blamed the other for all the dead, _and_ tried to use it as a recruiting tool for their cause."

"So what happened?"

Axton smirked grimly. "Dahl corporate policy kicked in. Standing orders are that when a field commander feels the mission is going to end in a net loss for Headquarters, they're authorized to take any action they see fit to end the engagement, without fear of repercussion from Central Command. After ninety days of holding actions and being hamstrung by idiotic leaders that wouldn't let us make any real tactical gains, our general decided to invoke those orders."

Gaige stopped working on her arm long enough to glance at Axton suspiciously. "And where were you when that got decided?"

"As a young NCO, my duty rotation had just landed me back at the official government headquarters," Axton said. His tone was dangerously light. "Along with the rest of my squad. Thirty soldiers that had just spent eighty-eight days on the front lines, seeing the war firsthand. Imagine how _glad_ we were to be back at the safe, warm, comfortable headquarters of the _official_ government that was doing _everything _it could for its people."

Gaige winced. "Oooooh boy."

"By morning, the official government had fallen," Axton went on. "By _amazing_ coincidence, one of our mechanized heavy infantry units had managed to find and take out all the _rebel_ leaders in the same night. The only people left to run the war were the field commanders on both sides, the men who were out there day in and day out, sending more and more men to die, and usually dying _with_ them." He gave a laugh that was entirely without humor. "Within an hour of word coming down that the leaders of both sides were dead, the on-scene commanders had called a ceasefire. Within two days, a truce. Within a _week,_ they had adopted the standard issue Dahl constitution, and opted to join the corporate coalition. Fifteen days after the old government and rebel leaders were dead, Dahl had sent ships to begin reconstruction of the world, and my mercenary unit was being recalled."

Gaige frowned. "Wait. The government hired you, then your superiors had you kill them all and took over the planet?"

"Yep."

"And everyone was _okay_ with that?!"

Axton shrugged. "The civilians were. Their planet was being rebuilt, there was more than enough food and medical care to go around, they had a chance to sign on with Dahl if they wanted to leave the planet, and, oh yeah, _no one was trying to kill them anymore_. As for us soldier types, we were just glad to be off that stinking hellhole of a world."

"You realize that's _profoundly_ messed up, right?" Gaige pointed out. "Your superiors betrayed and murdered their employers, then seized control on their own. What if the people hadn't wanted to be absorbed by Dahl?"

"We would've left," Axton said shortly. "Every soldier, gone the instant they said so. And they would've been on their own, on a destroyed planet with no hope of rebuilding." He sighed. "I realize everything you're pointing out, Gaige; I've lived with it a long time. I know it's morally questionable at best, and downright evil at worst. I've even heard conspiracy theories that Dahl engineered the whole thing, from start to finish." Axton rubbed his eyes tiredly. "I _did_ warn you it was worse than a mound of bodies in a clearing."

"You did do that," Gaige admitted. She sighed and laid down her screwdriver. "I've done as much as I can with this thing tonight," she commented, flexing her fingers and twisting her hand. "I'll finish with the digistruct circuitry tomorrow." She stood and stretched her arms over her head, cracking her back, groaning in satisfaction.

"Not putting the plating back on?" Axton asked, holding up one of the armored pieces. While Gaige's forearm did look considerably better, it was also very exposed. Axton could see the various circuit boards she'd described, fitted snugly between the metal bones of the limb.

"They've still got bullet holes in 'em," Gaige pointed out. "I need to weld patches over those, and I'm not doing it with them attached to my arm."

"Fair enough," he admitted. "So what, then? Going to sleep?"

"Not after that little bed-time story," Gaige said. "Thought I'd go over to Moxxi's and show Hammerlock that claw we brought back, maybe drink a few with him. Wanna come?"

"Think I'd rather go drink under the moon for a while," Axton sighed. "Remind myself of some the relative good I've done."

She smirked. "Fair enough." Gaige headed down the stairs. "_I'm _going to enjoy drinking under neon lights with a great white hunter a lot more, though."

"When are you going to accept you're not going to turn him?" Axton teased, walking beside her.

"Eh, I've accepted that since day one," she replied. "I guess I just like older men, even when they don't like me the same way. And he _does_ enjoy my company. I think I remind him of the daughter he never had." She picked up the Mongzilla claw from where they had left it, beside the main door into the building. "On the other hand, one shouldn't underestimate the charms of a beautiful girl carrying a trophy from a mighty kill. You never know what might happen."

Axton just shook his head as Gaige walked into the night air. "Soooooo messed up."

* * *

[It's half true, anyway. Thank you for reading!]  



	6. This one, either

Zero didn't usually lie to his fellow vault hunters. Between being known for not talking much and earning their trust in battle, there wasn't much opportunity or need to. This time, however, was different. He was worried for them.

Maya had shared her hypothesis that the pile of corpses in the clearing had been placed there deliberately. Zero knew that was true. He also knew that under normal circumstances, that heap of bodies would _not_ have made any of his friends physically ill. Every single one of them had been in combat almost constantly for months, and Pandora wasn't exactly a pleasantly aromatic planet anyway.

The blood of the dead had been laced with a chemical _designed _to make anyone that inhaled it sick and woozy. Maya and Gaige had been stricken almost immediately once they got close enough to the source- Maya, presumably because her of her relative lack of exposure to toxic substances, Gaige because of that as well as her lesser age and body weight. Krieg had been dizzied by it, but the chemical had taken several minutes, and a much larger amount, to make him sick. Zero wondered distantly if Hyperion's experiments on him had improved or weakened his resistance to the aerosol drug.

Either way, if Zero hadn't been able to convince all three of them to take the antidote disguised as mints, they would have been helpless during the _Terminus_ battles. That would have been beyond disastrous, possibly fatal, to everyone.

As for the other two... Axton had spent the greater part of his life in combat, exposed to any number of chemicals that would have improved his resistance, to say nothing of what Dahl would've given him. Salvador was a heavy drug user already. Between his lifelong steroidal doses and whatever else he might have taken for fun, Salvador's bloodstream had to have metaphorically laughed at the nausea compound and given it a wedgie.

Zero knew the chemical was in the pile because his helmet had detected it and alerted him. He knew its effects because he had used this substance on assassination targets in the past.

He had the antidote because it was always wise to carry the cure to your own inventions, just in case.

For someone else to have made use of it was extremely worrying in its implications. Zero had never shared his creation with anyone; why help the competition? So, when the others headed back to Sanctuary, he had lied and said he was still looking for his sword. In reality, he had spent the past several hours examining the mountain of decaying flesh.

Rooting around in a pile of dead bodies didn't bother Zero. What he found did.

Not a single one had been killed by bullets. _Every_ single one, from lowest tribesman to most dangerous scaylion, had been killed by a bladed weapon, and not a bayonet on the end of a gun. Zero preferred his sword to anything else, but he did appreciate the efficiency of bullets. Why this killer would _only_ use a sword suggested several unpleasant possibilities to him, one particularly bad.

Then there was the type of sword used.

Zero's helmet contained a lot of sophisticated gear. His atmospheric analyzer, his targeting systems, the cloak scanner... and the lesser used medical module. It could tell almost everything about a person's physical condition at a glance, including detailed analysis of what caused an injury. According to that sensor, the blade used was virtually identical to Zero's own, right down to the digistruct signature his blade left behind.

Another impossibility, given that Zero's sword design should have been, yet again, totally inaccessible to anyone else.

His own chemical weapon and his own melee weapon. Both had been used with near, or possibly even slightly above, his level of skill. The impossible was turning into the likely. Zero kept digging, looking for the final piece evidence that either refuted his worst fears, or confirmed them entirely.

Fifteen minutes later, he found it. A kunai, lodged in the body of one of the fallen.

And it was his. Not a copy, not one thrown by him, and not one made on Pandora. This was one the first prototypes he'd ever made, back when he was still perfecting his tools. Zero had fashioned this one to test throwing weight, before he'd come up with the exploding dagger idea. There was exactly one place in the six galaxies it could have come from, and only one person that would've taken it.

He was still trying to figure out all the ramifications when his ECHO squawked to life. [Zero? Come on, man, what's with you?]

Zero keyed his microphone, surprised. "Why have you returned? I still seek my lost weapon. Where are you right now?"

[I'm standing right across from you,] Gaige said, sounding exasperated. [Why didn't...] she trailed off. [Did you say you're still looking for your _sword? _Like, at the _Terminus_?]

The facts compiled instantly, and into a very sinister picture. "Get away from him!" Zero was already back in the _Terminus, _racing desperately for its fast travel station. "You are in massive danger! _That isn't me, Gaige!_"

Zero had reached the fast travel station. He reached out to bring up the destination screen-

The station exploded.

The blast threw him across the room, slamming him against the wall hard enough to make his helmet ring. Zero slumped to the ground, staring at the smoking ruins of his way home in disbelief. _No! I've been set up!_

[Who are you?!] Gaige's radio was still on. The sound of her shotgun cocking followed her shout. [What do you _want_?!] An angry shriek came over his radio, and the sound of gunfire.

Zero staggered to his feet and started back the way he'd come. Despite the lingering effects of the blast, he managed to get up to speed quickly. The rest of his mind was presenting the ugly facts to him.

With the _Terminus _station destroyed, the only other fast travel station was at the other end of the Cragg.

That was nearly five miles away.

The single most dangerous person Zero had ever known was in his _home._

Gaige had already engaged the enemy.

He wasn't fast enough to save her.

* * *

Gaige decided to get a little dressed up before meeting with Hammerlock. Axton was probably right, she'd never win his eye in the classic sense, but showing up with a fantastic hunting trophy _and_ wearing her leopard print dress wouldn't exactly _hurt_ anything. _Quick Change station, a-ho!_

Sanctuary was fairly quiet that night. She guessed most of the inhabitants were either sleeping off the past couple days' celebrations or taking to their own rooftops to watch the destroyed moonbase slowly drift out of alignment. After seeing that implacable 'H' shape over their heads for so long, often raining mortar assaults on them, anyone would want to watch it gradually fall victim to gravity. Thus, she was a little surprised to see someone standing over by the bounty board, and looking straight ahead instead of up at the sky. She was more confused given that there were no jobs, and that the person seemed to be facing her, not accessing it.

She squinted across the courtyard, trying to see if she knew them. Whoever it was, they were fairly tall. She couldn't make out their features. It almost looked like they were wearing a helmet-

Gaige's face broke into a smile. "Zero! When did you get back?"

Zero didn't move from the bounty board, or call out to her. He just raised his arm, waving her over.

They still had the whole courtyard between them. Gaige figured he hadn't heard her, so she raised her voice. "Any luck finding your sword?"

Zero still didn't say anything, but took a few steps down the stairway into the shadow between buildings. He kept waving his arm, beckoning her over.

Gaige was very confused, and a little irked. She was pretty sure Zero could hear her, but just to be totally sure, she keyed up his frequency on her ECHO. "Zero? Come on, man, what's with you?" Her expression cleared a little as she heard the radio crackle in reply. Maybe he actually _hadn't_ heard her, weird as that-

[Why have you returned? I still seek my lost weapon. Where are you right now?]

"I'm standing right across from you," Gaige said, exasperated. "Why didn't..." Her feet trailed to a slow halt as her brain caught up with facts. A cold feeling was starting to worm its way into her stomach. "Did you say you're still looking for your _sword? _Like, at the _Terminus_?"

The figure standing in the shadows waved its arm again, a little more urgently. Gaige started to set down the talon with her left hand and slowly reach for the handle of her shotgun with her right.

[Get away from him! You are in massive danger! _That isn't me, Gaige!_]

Maybe the figure standing in front of her heard Zero's warning. Maybe he just got tired of waiting. Whatever the reason, he started moving towards her. Gaige threw out her left hand automatically, clenching her fist-

_Crap!_ The unarmored portion of her forearm glared at her, a figuratively painful reminder that for the first time in a long time, she was on her own.

A split second later, she got a physically painful reminder as the stranger elbowed her in the stomach.

Gaige managed an awkward leap backwards, holding her stomach and coughing, trying to get her wind back. It didn't get her much distance, but it clearly surprised her opponent- it seemed he'd been expecting her to fall after one hit. _Not a chance, sucker._ Gaige yanked her shotgun and cocked it, aiming at the eerily familiar blank faceplate. "Who are you?! What do you _want_?!"

The figure wavered, as if it were a 3-d projection that had been disrupted-

_Decepti0n! _Gaige spun around, firing wildly, hoping to score any kind of hit on the cloaked figure she knew was somewhere nearby. There was a short spark to her left, as if she had nicked a shield. She twisted and fired again, but hit nothing. Whoever this guy was, he was just as fast as Zero, with at least half his tricks, and Gaige didn't have her best weapon. _I might be in trouble here._

She felt the ripple of air behind her, then pain exploded at the back of her skull, driving Gaige to her knees. She tried to twist her gun up for another blast, but a four-fingered hand slapped it away. Weakened by pain, her gripped failed and the weapon went flying off into the dark. Another blow to the head dropped her to the ground on her side, completely defenseless. Through blurry eyes, she stared up at the figure, expecting the final blow any second.

"_Get away from my slab!_"

Gaige had a vague impression of a massive figure leaping into the square, punching at a lanky shape. Her thoughts were growing hazy as the darkness around her grew thicker. What was going on? Why was she on the ground? She felt like she knew the two shapes fighting, there was bright blue light flashing everywhere... and why was she sad that the larger one had suddenly fallen to the ground?

She felt herself being picked up, a rush of air, then nothingness took her thoughts.

* * *

Brick was having a very good night at Moxxi's. He grinned amiably at the man sitting across the table. The other guy was heavily muscled and looked mean. He was also red-faced and sweating with a mixture of exertion and embarrassment as he struggled futilely with Brick's arm. "So? Are you ready to start trying yet?" Brick asked conversationally. He had to shout to be heard over the cheers of the crowd around their table.

The other guy just glared and pushed his right arm as hard as he could, veins standing out in his neck as he tried to overpower Brick's arm and smash it onto the table. Brick just grinned a little wider and reached for his tankard of ale with his other hand. "I never get tired of seeing you guys try this," he said, his tone light and pleasant. "One of these days, someone might actually be able to make me flex a muscle!" He started pouring the beer down his throat casually, not even bothering to look at the other guy. The glass was drained in a few seconds, and Brick smacked his lips appreciatively. "But it won't be you!" With no change to his expression or apparent effort, Brick slammed his arm down to win the match.

The cheers grew deafening; it was Brick's fifth victory so far that night, and he still had another ten competitors lined up. The rules were simple: one drink to arm wrestle him, and another when Brick won. If he lost, Brick would surrender his title as Slab King to the challenger.

"You know, sugar," Moxxi commented as she set his victory drink down, "one of these days, they'll wise up and stop playing."

He shrugged. "Probably. But it ain't gonna be tonight!"

"Really? Then what if you lose? You _really_ going to give up your gang?" Moxxi asked, smirking.

Brick just laughed. "Sure. But if anyone else can keep control of the Slabs for more than an hour, they _deserve_ to beat me." He stood up, holding his drink high. "Allllll _right, _suckers! _WHO'S NEXT?!_"

Gunfire.

Moxxi and a dozen other patrons all had their own weapons out in half a second; the rest had dropped to the floor. "Where's _that_ coming from?"

"Town center," Brick said, listening. "That almost sounds like-" Another burst of shooting cut of his words, and convinced him of the source. "That's Little Slab's gun!" Brick vaulted over the ducking bar-goers, running for the door. Little Slab usually sicced her floating metal attack dog on her enemies; if she was shooting this much, something had to be wrong.

Brick skidded to a halt as he neared the bounty board. He could see Gaige spinning around, like she was looking for a target-

He stared in disbelief. Ninja Slab had just appeared out of thin air and sucker punched Little Slab in the back of his head with his sword hilt! _What the hell?_

Then it didn't matter. One of his friends was under a vicious attack, and her attacker had just hit her in the head _again. _The world turned red.

"_Get away from my slab!_" Brick didn't have his hammer, and he didn't care. He just hurled himself at the lanky figure.

Surprise was on his side, and it earned him one solid hit. Brick's fist smashed against Zero's helmet, the impact cracking like a sniper shot. He swung with his left, aiming to sink his fist into Zero's gut-

Brick's fist _swished_ into empty air. Before he could react in time, there was a sudden blaze of light, slicing through the darkness in a dizzying pattern. He felt a sudden impact in his midsection and looked down.

A four fingered hand gripped a sword hilt. The hilt was buried in his stomach.

Brick started to feel strangely weak. Lines of heat were beginning to trace up and down his entire body, and his clothing felt damp all of a sudden. "Huh," he said dully. "Didn't know you were..." he collapsed, falling off the sword.

The figure flicked a near invisible switch on his sword hilt. The blade vanished, and droplets of Brick's blood splashed on the ground. Then he walked over to the unconscious Gaige, threw her over his shoulder, and headed for the edge of Sanctuary.

A burst of gunfire cut across his path. The figure halted and looked towards the source.

Axton was moving into the town square at a combat run, weapon leveled. Maya was right behind him, SMG at the ready. She gasped in horror at Brick's crumpled, slashed, and bleeding form. "Ax!"

"Take care of him," Axton said quickly. "_You _don't move." He started circling his target, trying to get in front of him. "What's going on here, Zero? You just go full psy-" Axton broke off, looking hard at the figure holding Gaige. "You're _not_ Zero. Who the hell are you?!"

The intruder made no verbal reply. His free hand twitched-

Axton fired a burst from his rifle, but a blaze of light threw off his aim. "Ah, dammit!" He blinked, trying to clear the spots from his eyes. "Maya! Do you see him?!"  
"I can't see _anything!_ What happened to the lights?!"

"What do you-" As his vision began to clear, Axton suddenly realized Maya was right. Sanctuary's engines were still humming, the city was still flying, but every light in the city had gone out, plunging them into near total darkness. The only light came from the moon and Maya's glowing tattoos. "No _way_...where the hell did he get one of _those?_"

"Axton." Maya's voice was tense, strained with effort. "Brick's too badly injured for me to heal on my own. He needs Zed's help, or he's going to die."

He yanked his attention away from the darkened town and knelt next to her. "Okay, just keep him alive. I'll go for help."

"Wait!" Maya managed to divide her attention just enough to give Axton a worried look. "Where's Gaige?"

"He took her," Axton said grimly. "And for good measure, his exit shut down everything up here, including the fast travel station. For now, we're trapped.

"Gaige is on her own."

* * *

[This time, it's totally true. Not a single word will matter next chapter. Thanks for reading!]


	7. Objective 1: Find Objective 2: Finish

The eridium extraction plant in the Highlands had been abandoned by everything except the loaders. The machinery left behind by Hyperion continued to churn the robots out, despite their lack of purpose. They milled about, guarding against nothing or repairing other useless machines.

They were completely unprepared for several people to come hurtling out of the air and smash into their compound.

"Kill 'em all!" Axton roared, hurling his turrets onto the field. "Wreck these mechanical bastards!"

Krieg ripped his axe through a loader, and leapt on to the next, laughing. "I am a buzzsaw on the wind! Watch me carve!"

"Now I know what a moonshot feels like!" Salvador bellowed, shredding a cluster of robots with his gunfire. "And I _like _it!" He grinned deliriously at Lilith. "When can we do that again?!"

Lilith fired and blasted another loader into pieces. "Tell you what, Sal! Next time the fast travel station gets crashed, I'll just _throw_ you off Sanctuary! You can fall the whole distance instead of me teleporting us halfway!"

"What happened up there, Lil?" Mordecai shouted, sniping a line of units. "Thought you were gonna get us the whole way down, not drop us partway!"

"I'm distracted!" Lilith yelled back, still firing. "Might have _something_ to do with our friend lying back in Sanctuary, hanging between life and death!"

"Then let's finish this fast!" Axton's fire scattered another loader's mechanical guts across the ground. "Chew 'em up, people! The sooner we get the salvage, the sooner Scooter gets power running again, and the better Zed and Maya's chances of saving Brick's life!"

The night air resounded with gunfire as the Vault Hunters annihilated the loaders. Faced with a kidnapper they couldn't pursue and a friend they couldn't heal, unrestrained violence in pursuit of an objective was all they had.

_We're not losing him,_ Lilith told herself, raking a trio of loaders with bullets. _He is _not_ going to die. _She tossed a grenade and blew another robot into shrapnel. _It's not like Roland. I can _do_ something this time._ The air around her flashed, and she plunged into the strange space between realities, lunging at her next target-

The strength rushed out of Lilith's legs like water through a sieve. She collapsed to the ground, fully back in the normal world, weakened and confused. The loader advanced and took aim, its energy weapon charging up-

A blue edged blade erupted from the loader's chest, cutting off its killing shot. "What's wrong, Firehawk?!" The blade turned sideways and whipped around, severing the top half of the loader from the bottom. "Falling to a mere _loader?_" A gloved hand grabbed Liliths's arm and pulled her up, then hurled a kunai and exploded a robot twenty feet away. "You're better than that!"

Lilith stared at the masked face, trying to force away her dizziness and confusion. "Zero? Where..."

"Unwise to banter," Zero admonished. He stabbed backwards, impaling a loader without looking at it. "Focus your mind on the fight, Lest it be your last!"

Lilith caught sight of a movement behind Zero's head and yanked his shoulder, pulling him down. "Worry about yourself!" A blast from her pistol shattered a Surveyor that had been about to make a strafing run on him. "Where _were_ you?!"

"Looking for answers!" Zero rolled free of her grip and carved a trio of loaders into scrap. "But I found them much too late." Zero straightened up out of his combat stance and slipped his sword back into his belt. _"He_ has attacked us."

Lilith looked around and realized they were out of targets. "Yes," she confirmed, holstering her gun. "Whoever this guy is, he took Gaige, almost killed Brick, and blew out Sanctuary's noncritical power control circuits. We came down here to scavenge some new ones." She stared at him as her mind started to catch up with what Zero was implying. "You know who this guy is, don't you?"

Zero nodded.

"I _knew _it."

Lilith looked towards the source of the voice and saw Axton approaching, closely tailed by the others. "Any luck finding the stuff?"

"Sal's got it," Axton said, staring hard at Zero. "What's going on here, Z? Who's this guy that looks and fights almost exactly like you?"

"An old enemy," Zero said grimly, "One I had thought long since dead.

"He is my brother."

There was a heavy silence. Finally, Salvador coughed. "Uh, you mean like _brother _brother, or guild of assassins type brother?"

"Irrelevant now," Zero said quickly, turning to Lilith. "Take me to Sanctuary. I can help treat Brick."

"_You?_" Axton demanded. "Since when are you a doctor?"

"I know his style," Zero pointed out. "I know where the damage is." He stared at Lilith, his voice pleading. "_I can save Brick's life._"

Lilith stared at him for a handful of seconds, then nodded. "Salvador, give me the components."

"What for?" Mordecai asked as Salvador handed over the bag of computer parts. "Aren't we all going back up?"

Lilith shook her head. "Something's... wrong with my powers," she said hesitantly. "I'm not sure what, but right now, I think it's best if I take the lightest possible load back to Sanctuary. That means Zero and me." She grabbed his arm. "The rest of you head for Overlook. I'll get Scooter started on the repairs."

"Lil-"

Lilith jumped away before anyone could protest. For a second, she wasn't certain they would make it to Sanctuary, even with the reduced load. The teleport seemed oddly sluggish, drawing far more strength from her than usual-

"Ugh!"

Lilith staggered as Sanctuary's town center flashed into existence around them. She was dizzy and felt like she'd been running for days, but they had made it. "Ohhh... _that_ was bad..."

Zero eased her to the ground. "Your strength is quite low, Your heart rate elevated. You need to rest now."

"No time," Lilith said stubbornly, pushing herself back up. "Even with whatever help you can give, Zed still needs power back, to say nothing of the rest of the city. I need to get these to Scooter." She glanced at him, her curiosity getting the better of her. "How'd you know about my heart rate, anyway?"

Zero tapped his helmet. "Medical scanner," he explained. "I don't use it very much, But-" He broke off and stared at her. "Huh."

Lilith looked at him, confused. "Oh, forget it. Brick needs you." She shoved him towards the clinic. "_Go._"

Zero nodded slowly and headed for the hospital. "Yes." Right before he entered the clinic, he called back, "Don't drink." Then he opened Zed's door and disappeared inside.

Lilith just shook her head and headed for the control spire. She could see Scooter's legs sticking out from under a piece of gear."Here, Scooter. Five circuit boards, like you asked for."

"All _right,_ Lily!" Scooter grabbed the bag enthusiastically. "Jus' what ah needed! Ah'll have power runnin' again faster 'n a skag kin eat a gun!" He dove back into the spire, parts flying everywhere. "Hey, we got any ahdea 'bout Gaige? Ah'm awful werried about 'er!"

"Get the power running," Lilith said, staring out at the sky. "Sooner you do that, the sooner we can go after her."

"You got it!"

_Hang on, Gaige..._

* * *

Gaige heard beeping, and groaned. _Five more minutes,_ she promised herself. _I'll get up in five more minutes. _She went to slap the snooze button on the alarm clock.

Pain lanced through her right wrist. She gasped and sat up, eyes flying open. She looked down to see what had hurt her.

Her wrists were missing all their usual ornamentation. In their place was something more like ancient style shackles, one solid piece of metal clapped around both wrists and locked shut. There was even a chain attached in the center, trailing off onto the floor.

They were also very asymmetrical. The cuff encasing her left wrist was thick, immobile, and unbreakable. The cuff on the right was made of sturdy, but thinner metal. It also had a razor's edge the whole way around its interior, nearly in direct contact with her skin. A thin line of blood was welling up were she had unwittingly pressed against it reaching for the alarm clock.

_Alarm clo- _"Where _am_ I?" she blurted. It certainly wasn't her room in Sanctuary. The walls were definitely metal, but it was too clean, too _new_ looking, to be her home. And she hadn't been sleeping in a bed, either. It looked like some kind of tube with a retractable coffin lid.

Gaige took a closer look at the tube. The interior was padded and lined with screens. The lid was arched and transparent, with controls mounted on its outside. "What the..."

"Gaige, I'm so glad we could meet,

For getting you here was a feat.

We went for a trip,

You are deep in my grip,

And you have much work to complete."

Gaige looked around in confusion. The male voice seemed to have come from nowhere, and it sounded oddly familiar. "Who are you? What do you _want?!_" Then she blinked. "Was that a _limerick?_"

She heard the soft _whir _of motors, and a door opened in the wall. A tall, lanky figure stepped out and stood in front of her, wearing a suit and helmet extremely similar to Zero's. Gaige's eyes narrowed. "You're the one who attacked me in Sanctuary," she realized, the events starting to reform in her mind.

The figure nodded.

"Mind explaining why I'm in a medical chamber?" she asked tautly. "I saw something like this in the hospitals back home, but they weren't this advanced. I remember reading this model was mostly for life-threatening injuries."

"An accurate term, I'm afraid; I hit you quite hard in my raid. You gained a concussion In the course of abduction, So a visit to my chamber you paid."

Gaige felt the back of her head as best she could with her hands shackled. There was no pain, even when she pressed hard. "You patched me up? Why? Why heal someone you kidnapped?"

"I have a great need for your talents In things with mechanical balance." He leaned closer, voice growing harsh. "And you will comply, Or your friends will each die And their bodies will rot on this planet."

For a second, Gaige was tempted to headbutt the blank faceplate out of sheer spite. Instead, she forced herself to stay calm. "You even threaten me in rhyme, huh? Is that an assassin thing? You guys aren't allowed to talk like normal people?"

The figure straightened up, and Gaige had the sense he was amused. "No." He picked up the chain attached to her cuffs and gave it a tug. "Come."

Gaige slipped out of the chamber, then frowned as she noticed something unsettling. Her weapons, grenade mod, combat module, shield, and ECHO unit were all gone. "Hey! Where's all my _stuff_?!"

"As long as I have you in here, You will not be needing your gear," he told her. "You'll do as I say Without any delay Or your life will be ending, I fear." He yanked the chain a little more sharply. "_Move._"

Gaige followed after him, making sure to keep the chain slack. The right cuff had dug warningly at her wrist when he had pulled it; if he had pulled any harder, Gaige would have had another cut. She did, however, take careful note of the chain itself. _That may be a weakness..._

"Where are we?" she demanded aloud. "What do you want me for?"

The figure pressed a keypad, opening the door he'd entered. He walked through without answering.

Gaige followed him into a short hallway, then into another, larger room. As the door slid closed behind her, she halted and stared in amazement. "Oh, my god. You _did_ kill me. I'm in heaven."

It was the most beautifully compact machine shop Gaige had ever seen. It made the one she'd had back on Eden V pale in comparison, to say nothing of what she'd been trying to use since reaching Pandora.

The centerpiece was a collapsible workbench, mounted on the wall. Every kind of tool required for mechanical and electronic work was laid out in perfect order around it, and seemed to glisten as she looked. Her fingers actually itched in anticipation of using some of the more esoteric devices. For a few seconds, Gaige nearly forgot that she was a prisoner.

Then he spoke. "I'm glad to see you approve, But it's time to get on the move. There's work to be done, You're not here for fun. Resist and your head you will lose."

She glared at him. "Are you going to threaten me every time you talk?" She didn't wait for answer, just walked over to the wall and started examining the equipment. "This is really high-grade stuff... lightweight, sturdy... and rigged for storage during space travel." She glanced at him over her shoulder. "This is from a starship's machine shop. Are we _in_ your ship right now?"

The figure didn't answer. Instead, he clipped the end of Gaige's chain to the wall, limiting her motion to about ten feet. Then he stepped to the other side of the room, well out of her reach, and started tapping at some controls on his arm.

Gaige took the opportunity to glance quickly around the room. Like she'd noted, it was definitely a machine shop, very likely an emergency repair bay for a starship. On a second look, she also caught sight of a thick, heavy door. Red lettering stretched across the top that read CAUTION: INNER DOOR_._ At the side, Gaige could just make out smaller lettering that ran Do not open if red light illuminated.

_ It's an airlock door,_ she realized. _It _is_ his ship. But does that mean we're flying right now?_ _Or did he land somewhere?_

She didn't have time to ponder. Her captor had finished whatever he was doing with his arm. "Watch."

A hologram flashed into the air between them, playing a video. Gaige looked carefully at the black and white footage, and realized what it was. "That's the _Terminus_ cargo hold."

He nodded, pressed a button, and the image skipped.

Gaige found herself looking on as she and her friends appeared on the screen, dropping into the water and wading across the room. There was no sound, but she didn't need it. "You were there? You were _watching_ us?"

Another nod, another time skip. Crosshairs appeared on the screen, and focused in tightly on Gaige's head. She was typing furiously on her ECHO, oblivious to the sniper scope trained on her.

A sense of unreality filled her mind. "You could have killed me," she said in disbelief. "You had me _cold._ None of us knew you were there, not even _Zero_." She looked through the image to the blank faceplate. "So why didn't you?"

He pointed to the screen again. Deathtrap blazed into life, Axton's turrets mounted on his arms. As Gaige watched, they turned the tide against Mongzilla, thanks to the modifications she'd made on the fly.

But this time, she was seeing from someone else's perspective. The crosshairs swerved away from Deathtrap and focused on Gaige's cybernetic limb. The forearm was just visible, and the image jerked upward with recoil. A second later, the image retargeted on her arm, now with a perfect bullet hole behind the wrist.

The playback stopped, and the hologram faded. Gaige was left staring at the figure again, her sense of unreality growing stronger every second. "It _wasn't _a ricochet. _You_ were the cause. You shot my arm to disable Deathtrap." Her eyes narrowed. "You were planning to kidnap me the instant you saw him, weren't you?"

"You're actually both wrong and right. I decided partway through the fight. Re-coding your bot Right there on the spot Did spare you from my gunsight." He tapped a few more keys on his wrist, and a compartment in the center of the floor slid open. A large, rectangular black metal box slid up out of the floor. "Look close and now you will see The reason I brought you with me. Zero was first, But when you are coerced The brothers will number at three."

"Brothers?" Gaige looked at him sharply. "What's in there? Who _are _you?"

The figure laid a hand on the box. "He was Zero. I am One.

"_This _will be Two."

The sides of the box folded down, turning it into a large table. The 'lid' rotated up and around, turning into a display screen. But it was the object lying on the table portion that seized Gaige's attention.

It was a metal humanoid. She wasn't sure of the height since it was laying flat, but it had to be at least six feet tall. It didn't have skin, but it didn't look exactly skeletal, either. Much of the body was covered in metal plating that made her think of pictures she'd seen of the muscles under a person's skin. Even the head seemed to have metal flesh attached, instead of being merely a skull.

Gaige knew robots very well. She had built Deathtrap, helped out Claptrap, and destroyed more Hyperion loaders than she could count. Eden V even had a few personal assistant bots in select areas. This creation lying on the slab in front of her, though... it put everything she knew about mechanical creations to shame. Even twenty feet away, she could tell it was a work of art.

She looked up at the figure that called itself One. "This is what you are? What Zero is? A true, honest to god _android_?"

One nodded. "Surp-"

"I _KNEW _IT!" Gaige actually jumped and shouted in triumph, glee on her face. "I _knew_ he had to be an android! Well, actually, I thought he was robot," Gaige admitted, getting as close to the prone figure as her chains allowed, "but I was closest! Salvador owes me twenty bucks!"

For the first time, One's faceplate wasn't blank. He was staring at his captive with '? ? ? ? ? ? ?' stretched across his helmet. "Uh..."

"This one's not finished, though, is it?" Gaige motioned at a section of the android's body and winced as the sharp cuff dug into her wrist. "Ouch. I can see the left arm needs work, and there's a lot of plating left off the chest cavity..." she trailed off and looked at One. "You want me to finish this one."

"Two."

"Whatever," Gaige said impatiently. "The point is, you think I can finish building this android and write its operating system. Bring it to _life_."

One nodded.

Gaige exhaled slowly and leaned back against the wall. "That's not going to be easy. I don't know anything about its designs, or how your code is written..." She trailed off, then looked down at her wrists as the reality of the situation came crashing back down around her. "Besides, you _kidnapped _me! I'm not gonna help..." Her voice died out again. "'Or their bodies will rot on this planet', huh?"

One nodded again, arms crossed in what looked like smug satisfaction.

Gaige hesitated, considering. In a straight up fight, she'd bet on any combination of her teammates against a single assassin. But she'd seen that One could get the drop on them; he'd already done it twice. Zero was alerted to One's presence now, but he couldn't cover everyone all the time. And she was pretty sure her friends would try to find her, coming out of the relative safety of Sanctuary and exposing themselves to One.

Then there was the other fact. She _wanted_ to work on this android. Heaven help her, she wanted to see if her skills were up to the task. "Just one condition," she finally said. "Let me ECHO my friends. It doesn't even have to be real time; I'll just leave them a voice message. I'll tell them I'm alive, and not to look for me. Then I'll work on your brother, and you don't have to worry about _them_ coming after _you_._"_

One pulled the sword off his belt. "No."

"It's the smarter move," Gaige insisted. "We've all faced death countless times; do you really think any of us are _scared_ of it anymore? That you can threaten me with _anything_ I haven't faced down already? I went up against Handsome Jack, for crying out loud! That was a guy that wanted to do every evil thing he could think of before killing me!" She pointed to the android. "But that... I've never done anything _close _to that. I'll work on it willingly and wholeheartedly, and all I ask is the chance to let my friends know I'm ok."

One didn't move or say anything for what felt like ten years. Finally, he put his sword away and started tapping on his wrist controls. A holographic number '5' appeared on his faceplate. "Talk."

"Talk? What do you mean?"

The '5' changed to '4'.

"Oh!" Gaige scrambled to think of her message. "Guys, I'm alive. He wants me to work on something I can't explain now. Just take care, and don't look for me."

The countdown finished, and One lowered his arm.

"Guess that means my phone call's over," Gaige said. She held up her shackles. "Can you remove these now? I can't exactly work with them on."

One walked over and grabbed the restraints. "You're just being freed to work. Don't-"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," Gaige interrupted. "Just stop rhyming at me all the time."

One didn't say anything else. He keyed a sequence on his wrist controls, and the shackles opened.

Gaige rubbed at her cut wrist. "Ouch. Can I have a band-aid before I start? I'm all sliced up over here."

Her captor merely pointed at the wall of tools.

"Okay, okay, I'll get started." She turned away, doing her best to look abashed and afraid. "Just give me a minute to go through the stuff," she said, pulling open a drawer. "I don't even know what all I have to work wi- oh. This is handy."

The drawer was full of loop clamps, similar to the ones she used to keep her hair up. "Let's see if I've still got my dexterity," she muttered.

She did. Even without a mirror, she had her hair back to its normal, pig-tailed state in a few seconds.

After a little more examination, Gaige had a rough idea of all the parts she had to work with. All the ones she might need to work on the android... and _most_ of the ones to finish her arm's digistruct repairs.

The circuitry in her arm was nearly functional. If she could complete a few minor tweaks, she could summon Deathtrap and just might have a shot getting out of this mess.

That was going to be tricky, though. A professional killer with razor sharp eyesight was watching her every move; she was going to have to be extremely sneaky. Still, Gaige was good at sneaky. Well, _Zero_ was good at sneaky, but she had watched him enough to pick up a few tricks. In the meantime...

Gaige took a few screwdrivers of assorted sizes down and headed over to the workbench. Between finishing the most advanced machine she'd ever seen and surreptitiously fixing her own killer robot so she could escape an android assassin, she had her work cut out for her.

It was time to get started.

* * *

[Okay, so I lied. Hope you enjoyed the story anyway!]


	8. When in doubt, get drunk and pass out

The front porch of Zed's clinic looked like a homeless shelter that had run out of beds, and not a very reputable one, either. Half a dozen liquor bottles bearing the Zaford family logo lay discarded on the ground, empty or nearly so. The Vault Hunters themselves were similarly strewn about, all but Lilith with a fresh assortment of bruises and cuts. As the dawn began to creep into the sky, the light on Zed's door turned from red to green, and a very tired back-alley doctor opened the door to his shop for the first time in hours.

Zed looked down at the scattered bodies on his doorstep and whistled. "Damn. I go through hell patchin' up your buddy, and now I got a waitin' line. What happened to you guys?"

"Violence with a purpose, followed by drunken violence _without_ a purpose," Axton groaned, pushing himself up. "Let's just say the Holy Spirits is going to need some repair work."

"Never leave four angry, unfocused Vault Hunters alone within walking distance of a bar," Lilith said, rubbing her eyes. "By the time Scooter restored power and I went to Overlook for these guys, the bar brawl had scared the _stalkers_ away." She looked at Zed, fear and hope competing in her chest. "How is he?"

Zed shook his head. "He's a tough sonovabitch, alright. Pulled through ten hours of _nasty_ surgery, but he still ain't healed enough for insta-health to have any effect. I don't rightly know if he'll even get that far, but we've done as much as we can. The rest is up to his own body."

"Can I see him?"

"He's sedated, Lily," Maya said gently, coming up from behind Zed. "He needs sleep."

"Him and you both," Salvador said, staring at her. "You're a _mess._"

Maya gave him a wan smile. Her face was pale, she had dark circles under her eyes, and her normally immaculate hair was matted with sweat. She was also covered with Brick's blood. "Ten hours of intense continuous power use, trying to promote his body's own healing while Zed did his best patch up the major damage. Never trained for _that_ one at the monastery."

Lilith pulled her into a tight hug. "You gave him a fighting chance. Thank you."

"Wasn't just me," Maya said, hugging back. "No one of us could have done it alone."

"And frankly, we'd still be in there without Zero here," Zed added. "Or... we would've been out a lot sooner, if'n ya catch my drift." He shook his head in amazement. "He found and fixed problems I never woulda. Didn't know an assassin could be such a good doctor."

"Medical scanner," Zero said modestly, "Intended to confirm kills." He shrugged. "Very useful here."

"I don't care why you got it," Mordecai said. "You helped give Brick a shot, and that's all the big boy ever needs. He'll pull through, I know it."

Axton cleared his throat. "Listen, I know we're all tired and half of us are still drunk. But now that Brick's out of immediate danger, we need to think about our other team member."

Maya wiped her face. "Gaige. Do you think whoever took her has kept her alive?"

"Ask Zero," Salvador suggested. "He's why we've been waiting all night. He says he knows this guy, that it's his brother."

Maya turned to him in shock. "Is that true?"

Zero nodded. "He is my brother, And seems to want Gaige alive. Her death is doubtful."

"Let's take this to Moxxi's," Lilith suggested. "She makes pretty good sober-up food, and we can discuss strategy." She pointed at Maya and Zero. "You two get cleaned up, first. We get covered in blood a lot, but this is... different."

"That's one way to put it," Maya said dryly.

"Make it fast," Axton said tightly. "This whack job has already had ten hours with Gaige." He looked pointedly at Zero. "And there's a whole lot of explaining I want to hear from _you._"

"You mean, now that he's not busy helping save Brick's life," Salvador pointed out.

"Yeah." Axton paused. "Thanks for that."

Zero just nodded and walked towards the archive building.

"I'm going to shower," Maya said, starting after him. "Save me some food. And coffee. Definitely coffee."

"Joining us for breakfast?" Salvador offered to Zed. "You've earned a spot."

Zed shook his head. "I wanna stay close to Brick. If he tanks, I'll have to act fast." He gave an odd chuckle. "And if y'all are gonna eat at Moxxi's, I might need to get my stomach pumps ready, just in case."

* * *

"So, how is it?" Maya asked, sitting down at Moxxi's bar. She'd changed her outfit and washed up, but still looked exhausted. "Is Zed going to have a rash of food poisoning cases next?"

Salvador shook his head and continued devouring a plate of something unidentifiable. "No way! This is _delicioso!_" He grinned at Moxxi. "If I'd known you could cook like this, I'd have married you myself!"

Mordecai gave a small growl and stabbed his food a little more forcefully than was necessary.

Moxxi smirked and set a plate of steaming food in front of Maya. "Sorry, sweetie. You're cute and all, but I like my husbands a little... bigger."

"That's how I like my women, but for food like this, I'd make an exception," Salvador retorted cheerfully.

"Maybe she taught Ellie to cook," Axton suggested, halfway through his own plate.

"Oooh, good point!" Salvador looked at Moxxi expectantly. "Did you?"

Moxxi's expression seemed to flit through horrified, pleased, stunned, and amused all at once. "Um, well..."

"What exactly _is_ this?" Maya asked quickly. "Some kind of eggs?"

"Scrambled rakk eggs and skag liver," Moxxi said, seizing the answer like a lifeline. "Best hangover cure on Pandora. Skag liver sucks up alcohol like a sailor on leave, and rakk eggs... well, they hide the flavor of the liver."

Maya looked at her plate uneasily, then shrugged and started eating. "Mm. Pretty good. Anybody seen Zero yet?"

"Here." Zero joined his friends at the bar. "Now that I _am_ here, The time has come for the truth: who my brother is."

"Seems like the right place to start," Axton agreed. "Who he is, why he came here, and why he took Gaige."

"_And_ how we find him," Maya added.

Zero nodded, then paused. He seemed to be considering what to say. "He came to kill me," Zero finally began. "He blames me for Father's death. No changing his mind. Many years ago, We fought to slay each other. I thought I had won." Zero stopped and shook his head.

"You blew it," Axton said bluntly. "He survived and tracked you here to finish the job."

"And now he's got Gaige," Lilith said. "Why would he take her?"

Zero flashed a question mark on his faceplate. "His reasons, unknown. His machinations, skillful." Zero paused. "One theory, I have."

"Spit it out, _muchacho,"_ Mordecai growled.

"Trying to hurt me. Kill my friends, break my spirit." Zero looked at them, his masked gaze traveling from face to face. "You are all targets." Zero's words hung in the air like a guillotine. The threat glistened in everyone's mind for a minute, and then...

"Let the shadows tear at my flesh!" Krieg roared. "The light in my veins will eat the darkness!"

"Even _I _got that one," Salvador agreed. "Let this _pendejo _come at us!"

"He's got another thing coming if he thinks he can handle a Siren," Maya proclaimed.

"So he's a ninja," Axton shrugged. "Big deal. _I'm_ a commando. Bring it on."

Zero's mask flashed :D "Knew you would say that." The smiley vanished. "He is very well trained, though. We'll have to be smart."

"If he's actively hunting us, maybe we can use that to our advantage," Lilith suggested.

"Whatcha thinkin', Lil?" Mordcai asked.

"Set a trap," she answered. "If I were to draw him out in the open, I could teleport out before-"

"_NO._"

Everyone looked at Zero, startled. Their assassin was half out of his seat, hands pressed against the bar so hard the wood was bowing under his fingertips. His helmet was displaying '!' across the front.

Lilith blinked and rested her chin on her hands. "Oh, really? You got a better idea?"

Zero seemed to realize he'd acted oddly and sat back down, faceplate going dark again. "Have you forgotten Your powers are off-balance? You can't go alone."

"I wasn't going to _be_ alone," Lilith said with exaggerated patience. "I was going to say, I could lure him into attacking me, then I teleport out and everyone else fires at him with everything they've got." She glared at him. "And my powers aren't _that_ out of whack, thank you very much."

Salvador grinned. "_I_ like it."

"Seems a little simplistic," Maya said diplomatically. "Don't forget, Zero thought he killed this guy once before and it didn't stick. And we'll probably need him to lead us to Gaige." She grinned a little. "It'd be hard for a pile of bloody giblets to tell us where to find her."

"I dunno, I've known some pretty talkative giblets," Lilith replied, laughing. "Point taken, though." She pushed her plate away. "Let's move to one of the tables and talk strategy. I'll be right back."

"Where you goin'?" Mordecai asked as everyone started shuffling off their barstools.

"Little Siren's room," Lilith said. "Why, you need the Little Sniper's for yourself?" She pushed the door open and headed outside.

"Wait."

Lilith paused and turned around. Zero had followed her outside and was closing Moxxi's door. "What? You keeping me company?"

Zero looked Lilith up and down, then at the surrounding area. He seemed to be making sure they were alone. Finally, he said in a low voice, "Stay out of harm's way. It is very important."

Lilith frowned and crossed her arms. "Last time I ignored a warning like that... well, let's just say I'm willing to listen. But why?"

Zero answered, and his last five syllables changed everything for Lilith.

* * *

"No," Maya said flatly.

"You nodded off into your breakfast three times," Axton pointed out.

"I just need more coffee."

"You drifted off in mid-sip _of_ your coffee!"

"I am _not_ taking a nap while the rest of you talk about how to save Gaige!" Maya sighed and rubbed her eyes. "We've all gone without sleep before. I'll be fine."

"No, you won't," Axton said bluntly. "You were using your powers constantly for _ten hours_. You said yourself you've never pushed that hard before. You can't function right now, especially not on the battlefield."

"We're discussing strategy!"

"And then heading out to kill an assassin as skilled as Zero," Axton went on. "You've seen him in action; do you think you could take him, right now? Honestly?"

There was a long silence. Finally, Salvador cleared his throat. "You do kinda look like walking death," he admitted.

Maya glared at him. "Thanks _so _much."

"Pretty lady turned into raccoon lady," Krieg offered. "Raccoons sleep during day."

"Et tu, psycho?"

"Face facts," Axton said. "We're going to need you at better than you are now to rescue Gaige. If you don't get some rest during the planning stage, you're sitting out the fight. If you're weak on the battlefield, this guy will exploit that."

"None of us want to lose someone else," Mordecai said quietly.

Moxxi finally broke the silence. "Just grab a few hours in back, sugar," she suggested. "I've still got a spare room open. Just through the door to the right of the bar."

Maya smiled wanly. "I guess I'm not getting away from this one, am I?" She tossed up her hands. "Fine, I'll sleep for a few hours. But the _instant_ we've got a battle plan, you wake me."

Axton nodded. "Promise."

"Not you," Maya said curtly. She pointed at Krieg. "I'm counting on _you, _Krieg. Wake me as soon as we're ready to move." She winked. "There's a kiss in it for you."

Krieg sat bolt upright and thumped his chest. "The guard goose honks at midnight! The speed demon won't steal the cheese from _this _cat!"

Maya smiled. "Thanks. Ok, Moxxi. Take me to your bed."

Axton choked on his drink.

"Anytime, sugar," Moxxi said breezily. "You're always welcome to sleep where I do."

Salvador grinned and slapped Axton's back, trying to get him breathing again. "You okay, _hermano?_"

Axton waved him him off and nodded. "Dirty trick," he managed to get out, still coughing.

"Long as she gets some sleep," Mordecai said, shrugging. "Now all we need is Lilith and Zero- oh, there they are."

Lilith and Zero had just re-entered the bar and were headed for their table. Lilith pulled up a chair. "Hey. We ready to start?"

"As long as Zero is," Axton said. "We sent Maya to get some rest, but you weren't using Siren magic to keep a giant alive all night. Are you alert enough to give us a rundown on your brother?"

Zero nodded.

"Good, then let's get started. What-"

"Hang on." Mordecai was looking closely at Lilith. "You okay, Lil? You look kinda shaky."

"I'm fine," Lilith said, waving him off. "Axton's right, we need to get moving on this." She turned to Zero. "What can you tell us about your brother?"

Zero snagged a chair and joined the cluster of people around the table. "He emptied the Cragg. All the dead, his handiwork." :\ "He has grown skillful." Zero laced his fingers together and seemed to think. "As for finding him, He will make it difficult. Not sure where to start."

"Oh, _that's_ useful," Axton growled. "All night waiting, and all you can say is, 'I got no ideas?'!"

"Hold on," Mordecai said. "Let's try thinking like trackers before goin' crazy. Start with the obvious: how did he get here?"

"Why does _that _matter?"

"Because it might lead us right to 'im," Mordecai insisted. "Think about it. When was the last time a passenger ship landed here?"

"I don't know, sometime before we destroyed the moon base," Axton said. "How does that help?"

"As it turns out, I _know_ your ship was the last commercial flight to Pandora," Mordecai said. "Found out when I was looking for the Vault key that Hyperion was lockin' down the planet. Everything since then has been privately owned and approved access from Hyperion station... or goin' totally off the radar." He looked at Zero. "Whatcha think, Z? Could your brother have gotten here without Hyperion knowing 'bout it?"

"Could an assassin Fly by Hyperion's eyes?" Zero asked dryly. "All too easily."

"So he's probably got his own ship," Mordecai pointed out. "If he got sloppy making planetfall, we can track his descent."

"Great," Axton said bluntly. "How?"

"With the city's eyes, We shall seek the hidden path." Zero looked around at his friend's blank expressions and sighed. "Scan for ion trails."

Salvador still had a blank look on his face. "Do what, _amigo_?"

"Use Sanctuary's sensors to look for a ship's exhaust," Mordecai explained. "Nice idea. Whaddya think, Lil? Can we do it?"

Lilith didn't answer for a minute. She was staring at Zero like she'd never seen him before.

"Lilith?"

She blinked and looked at Mordecai. "Hm? Sorry, what?"

"Sanctuary's sensor's," he repeated. "Do they work enough for us to track this guy's ship?"

"Ummm..." she considered for minute. "They should. I don't know how exact they'll be, though."

"If it gets us within shooting range, I'll be happy," Axton said. "What do we need to do?"

"Nothing," Lilith said, standing up. "Leave it to me. I can do the scan from Headquarters. You guys keep talking strategy, we still need a plan to deal with this guy when we find him." She headed out the door.

"Where's she headed?" Moxxi asked, walking over and taking the vacated seat. "Meeting over already?"

"She's taking a shot at finding our kidnapper," Axton said. "How's Maya?"

Moxxi shook her head and _tsk tsk_ed. "Poor dear was out cold before she finished falling into bed. She won't wake up on her own anytime soon, that's for sure." She pulled Rubi out of its holster and started checking the cylinder. "How goes the rescue planning?"

"Haven't gotten very far," Axton grunted. "We're still not sure how to even find this guy."

"Why bother hunting for him?" Salvador asked. "He's after you, right, Zero? Maybe if you put a challenge out over the ECHO, he'll just come to you."

Zero considered. "My death, he lusts for. But I was alone before. Why not kill me then?" He shook his head. "He will not come yet. He took Gaige for something big. We must go to him."

"Bringing us right back around to finding this guy." Axton had pulled his ECHO unit off and was toying with it restlessly. "She was working on this last night, you know?" he said abruptly. "Separating Deathtrap and my turrets. I was worried she was going to wreck my baby, but she put everything back together better than new. Even managed to wrangle a targeting interface." He gave a dry laugh. "Ain't that something? This whole time we've been running around Pandora, we could've linked our targeting systems, or given my girl the chance to fly with her boy. Tell me _that_ wouldn't have come in handy once or twice."

Moxxi looked at him sharply. "Sugar, did you just say you could link systems with Gaige?"

"That's what she told me," Axton confirmed. "Never got a chance to test it."

"How? With a polyphasic rebound signal, or a multi-waveform frequency pulse?"

Axton had inherited Salvador's blank look. "Huh?"

"Oh, just give me that." Moxxi yanked the ECHO out Axton's hand.

Everyone else stared in perplexed disbelief. "When did you learn to speak technobabble?" Mordecai finally asked. "You sounded like Tannis and Gaige arguing last night."

"I programmed Innuendobot and helped write the coding for Digistruct Peak," Moxxi pointed out, still working on Axton's ECHO unit. "I know a _few_ things about computer systems."

"So why are you digging around in my turret programs?" Axton asked.

"Because, my sweet silly soldier, there is every chance that we can use that interlink targeting program to get a better idea of where to find Gaige. Aha!" Moxxi looked up in triumph. "Quantum tunneling signal, rerouted through the targeting system. That girl's bright enough to be my daughter."

Salvador blinked in confusion. "Yep, I'm lost. What are you talking about?"

"Getting us one step closer to our missing Mechromancer," Moxxi explained. "The way Gaige set up this program means that your turrets will scan for her ECHO signal if you activate them before she turns on Deathtrap." She looked around at them expectantly, then sighed at the lack of comprehension. "Then guns will point in her direction when you activate her targeting program. Get it now?"

"We can get a bearing on her!" Mordecai said, sitting up straighter.

"Better than that," Axton said, excitement creeping into his voice. "We can get two. If Lilith can get a read on the ship's ion trail, and I get a ping off Gaige's ECHO-"

"Just one problem, hon," Moxxi interrupted. "Even though this signal is _beautiful_ for combat, it's the Motor Mama of girlfriends for any serious range. We're going to need push the signal with a much more... _potent_ transmitter to get a trace."

"Like what?" Axton asked.

"What about Sanctuary_?_" Salvador suggested. He sounded like a man trying to keep his head above water with the tide coming in. "She's a spaceship, no? Ships talk to other ships, no? That's gotta take _mucho_ power. We patch Ax's guns in, maybe she can talk to Gaige."

"Nice idea, but it won't work anymore," Mordecai said. "We gutted Sanctuary's comm system for parts weeks ago." He shook his head, irritated. "Everything goes out over the ECHOnet anyway. Why would we need it?"

"What about that?" Axton asked, leaning forward. "Could we use the ECHOnet itself to send out the locator pulse?"

"Only if we could get everyone else on the planet _off _it," Moxxi sighed. "I saw the ECHO usage when I tried to broadcast my Circle of Slaughter fights off planet. The bandit comm traffic alone goes through bandwidth like an STD through a swinger's convention. We'd never get a signal out and back fast enough to be useful."

"So all we need is a powerful transmitter that nobody's using," Axton sighed, shaking his head. "Perfect." For a minute, nobody spoke. Then...

"Chance!"

Everyone looked at Krieg.

"Chance!" he repeated. "Go to chance, send the carrier pigeon to find our lost kitten!" When this brilliant proclamation was greeted with blank stares all around, he growled in frustration. "The mirrored spires, yelling to the six heavens! Chance! Break! Opening! Fair shake!"

"Think I should wake up Maya?" Mordecai asked. "She can usually figure him out."

"Graaah!" Krieg slammed his fist into the table, and grabbed his head with both hands. "Go...last...chance..."

Moxxi pushed herself backwards and aimed Rubi. "Is he losing it?"

"No, wait!" Salvador held up a hand. "He's done this before, usually when he's trying to tell us something important. Give him a minute."

Krieg squeezed his head hard enough to put cracks in his mask. "Made the slideshow! Broke the metal symbols because the garbage can said to!" Every word seemed dragged out of him with terrible effort, but he kept at it. "Drowned the battle circle! _Village_ _of_ _Chance!"_

"_Opportunity_," Zero realized. "Hyperion's failed city. That is his meaning."

Krieg roared and raised his arms in triumph. "Sokath, his eyes uncovered!"

_"Si,_ buddy, _si_," Salvador tried to pull Krieg back into his seat. "Just keep it down, or you'll wake Maya."

Axton turned to Moxxi. "Would that work? They _did_ have a broadcast system that went out to the six galaxies."

"And it's damn sure no one's usin' it now," Mordecai added.

Moxxi set her chair upright and sat down gingerly. Rubi was holstered, but she kept her hand on the grip. "It probably only transmitted to the moonbase, but... yes, that might just work." She smiled at Krieg and let go of her gun. "Nice thinking, sugar."

"The coyote wins once!" Krieg said, nodding. He seemed pleased with himself.

"Then let's get moving," Axton said, standing up. "Once we get to Opportunity, I'll-"

"Do _what_, sugar?" Moxxi asked sweetly.

Axton started to open his mouth, then seemed to trip over his tongue. "I have no idea." He scratched his head. "Do _you_ know how to hook my turrets into Hyperion's broadcast tower?"

"Not a clue," she admitted. "But I'll keep poking around your gear. Maybe I can figure something out."

"While you do that, let's see if Lilith found anything yet," Mordecai suggested. "Might give us something else in the meantime."

* * *

Lilith was bent over the holotable in the Raider's headquarters, frowning at the screen. She glanced up as the others walked in. "Hey. What's up?"

"We've thought up two possible ways to track this guy, and Moxxi's working on the other one," Axton said. "How're things going on your end?"

She sighed. "It's not. Sanctuary's sensors never were especially great, and years of neglect didn't help much." Lilith straightened up, running a hand through her hair in frustration. "I can't get anything concrete. I'm sorry."

"Well, it was worth a shot," Axton sighed. "Maybe our other plan will-"

"Wait." Zero bent over the table, studying the image. "Have you tried to find A beta particle spike? That would be a start."

Lilith shook her head. "No, standard ship's engines give off alpha spikes. Why would I look for beta?"

"He's not using a Standard ship to get around," Zero said darkly. "I"m certain of it."

Salvador cleared his throat. "I just want to say, I have no _idea_ what you two are talking about."

Lilith smiled faintly. "Don't sweat it, killer." She started entering commands on the table interface. "Ok, checking for beta particle spikes... huh." A series of yellow dots flashed up on the map. "Look at that. Got something."

Axton virtually pounced on the table. "What are those? Is one of them his landing spot?"

"Thruster bursts, changes In speed, heading, altitude," Zero reported. "But it's a good start."

Mordecai tapped the screen. "There's a cluster of 'em here, over Tundra Express. Maybe we can use that."

"How so?"

"I've hunted ion trails before," Mordecai replied. "If we can get a good enough read on these traces, maybe we can refine Sanctuary's sensors to pick up more. Lead us right to him."

"Sure, but how are we going to get a better scan?" Lilith asked dubiously. "We're a long way from Tundra Express, our sensors can barely pick it up without the refinements we're talking about, and Sanctuary can't fly there. It'd take hours. The signals will have faded by then."

Axton grunted. "We need a scan to take a scan. Great." He looked around the room. "I don't suppose anyone has a spare high-resolution particle scanner laying around?"

A strange sound made everyone look over at Zero. It wasn't until a :] symbol flashed onto his faceplate that they realized he was laughing.

"What? What's so funny?"

Zero reached into one of his belt pouches and pulled out a small, boxy device. "High-resolution Particle scanner right here." He shrugged. "Useful for hunting."

"For all those times you had to track a spaceship on foot?" Axton asked wryly.

Zero shrugged. "Yes."

"We'll need more info," Mordecai said. "That might give us a direction the ship headed, but not where it landed." He looked at Axton. "Seems like that Opportunity trip is gettin' more necessary all the time."

"I'll go see Moxxi," Axton said. "Maybe she came up with an idea. How soon do we head for Tundra Express?"

"The same time as the Opportunity mission," Zero said firmly. "To disguise the hunt."

"We're not _disguising_ anything," Axton spat. "We're going after this guy, and we're doing like we do anything else: full speed, guns blazing." He looked around the room. "Last night was the worst night of my _life_. That was the first time I haven't been able to out-shoot, out-run, or, worst case, out_-think_ a problem. We've got a plan to track this guy down. I say we go full tilt with it, and damn the torpedoes. If he catches wind of us and makes some move, so much the better. It just means whatever he throws at us now won't be there for him to use later."

He pointed at Zero. "Your brother is an assassin with a starship and a hostage. So what? We're _Vault Hunters_."

There was a brief silence, then Lilith grinned. "And if anybody has any objections after _that_ little speech, they shouldn't be on Pandora anyway." She pulled up images of Tundra Express and Opportunity. "So. Who's going where?"

"I'd rather go to Tundra Express," Salvador said. "I don't like that city."

"I _have_ to go to Opportunity," Axton pointed out. He turned to Krieg. "How about it, slugger? Wanna tear down some Hyperion property?"

Kreig thumped his fist into his palm. "Bright lights, big city! That's the life for centipede!"

"I'll take that as a yes."

"It _is_ my scanner," Zero added. "Tundra Express should be mine. Only logical."

"Actually, I need you here," Lilith said quickly. "You know your brother's mind better than any of us. I could use your help, um... figuring out where he might've hidden. Just in case neither of these plans work."

"But... it's my scanner," Zero protested weakly. A :( flashed onto his helmet display.

"Don't give me your frowny face," Lilith ordered. "I need you here. Teach someone else to use it."

"Or just give it to me."

Everyone turned. Maya was leaning in the doorway.

"Pretty raccoon lady should be sleeping!" Krieg insisted. "No goose honk!"

Maya waved her hand. "I'm alright, Krieg. Back up to full."

"After less than two hours of sleep?" Salvador gave a low whistle. "You'll have to teach me that trick, _chica_."

Maya held up her tattooed arm and grinned. "Never underestimate Siren recuperative powers. I used my own healing energy to boost the effectiveness of my nap. I feel like I've slept for _days_." She walked over to Zero and plucked the device out of his limp hand. "This the scanner?"

"Yes," he started. "But-"

"Is this an _Illudium Q-36_?" She looked at him in stunned appreciation. "This isn't just a scanner, it's portable science lab! I would've _killed_ for a piece of tech like this! How did you _get _it?"

Zero shrugged helplessly and surrendered. "Killed for it."

Maya just shook her head and grinned. "Of course. Don't worry, I'll take good care of your toy."

Krieg looked down at Salvador. "Your Babe Ruth for my Sammy Sousa?" he offered hopefully.

"No thanks, _amigo_," Salvador refused. "I wanna kill something today, and that city's too empty for any fun. Besides, Opportunity was your idea in the first place."

Krieg sighed. "When at your hands did I deserve this scorn?"

"Cheer up, big guy," Maya said, winking. "Keep yourselves safe and I'll give you that kiss when you get home."

Even with his face masked Krieg's smile was visible.

"For now, I'm going to check with Moxxi," Axton said. "Hopefully she came up with an option to get my turrets interfaced with Hyperion tech." He motioned to Salvador and Maya. "You two better get ready. As soon as we're prepped, everyone's leaving _real_ damn fast."

* * *

[Instantaneous healing items are great game mechanics, but they're real drama killers, you know that?]  


[At this point, we're about a third of the way into this thing. I'd like to ask you, dear reader, how's it going? Still fun? Any guesses about the future? Think you'll want to stick around to the end?]

[And, as always, thanks for reading!]  



	9. Dah dah DUUUN! ! ! !

When Gaige had been working on 'Project DT', she'd hardly ever stopped for anything. She'd decide to work for five more minutes before bed, wake up to find she'd fallen asleep in a pile of bolts, brush her face off, and keep going. More than once her father had practically had to drag her away from her workbench so she would eat something. Ironically enough, her science fair project made her miss a few days of school long before it got her expelled. Gaige had been having fun and terrifying times on Pandora to be sure, but nothing had quite matched the rush of mechanical creation she'd experienced building Deathtrap.

Working on this android, even with a metaphorical sword to her throat, was the closest she'd come to recapturing that feeling. It wasn't exactly the same, though. She kept hitting snags, moments when she'd lose the flow and be dragged out of her rush. Part of it was the fact she was a prisoner, as much as Gaige tried to ignore it. Most of it was the sheer complexity of the project.

The android was even more elaborate than her first glance had indicated. The designs were beautifully laid out and intricately woven together. She'd be examining a minor motor circuit in a finger and find herself sidetracked into tracing the pathway all the way back to the brain; the whole thing just flowed together so easily.

It also wasn't nearly as finished as it looked. The outer plating was in place, but much of the interior still had to be assembled and installed. Gaige was enthralled by the android, but she wasn't entirely sure how to start trying to _build _it. She looked up at One. He was standing in a corner watching her, arms crossed and unmoving. "I need the schematics. There's no way I can do anything without them."

One merely shook his head no.

"Come on!" Gaige insisted. "I'm completely in the dark here! Whoever built this thing-" She changed tack quickly. "Whoever designed you two had years more experience than me. I need to catch up on their plans before I can make any progress."

"You've already shown off your skill With each of your robot's kills. Plans are not needed To make this one completed. All that you lack is the will," One rejected flatly.

"This is waaaaay different than when I built Deathtrap," Gaige insisted. "That was _my_ project. I knew how I wanted to end up, even if I didn't know every step when I started. But this..." she motioned to the android. "You're asking me to write the end of _Romeo & Juliet _when all I know is _Beowulf!_" Gaige reconsidered. "Actually, reverse that; this android is too cool to be a stupid love story. But the point stands!"

One gave an irritated sigh. "I don't trust you with my computer; Who knows what all you would do there. Printing those files Would take paper for miles-"

"You've left me no room to maneuver," Gaige interrupted dryly, crossing her arms. "Look, I have to learn this android all the way, from first bolt to last circuit. I _could_ do it by tearing it apart-"

One dropped his hand to his sword warningly.

"-but neither of us wants that, and it'd take too long for your patience, I'm sure." Gaige tossed her hands up. "I need the plans, or I'll never finish this. It's your call."

There was a long paused as -she assumed- One considered his options. Finally, he nodded and headed for the door. "Wait." The door slid shut.

Gaige acted fast. While examining the tool bench, she'd noticed several drawers that looked like ones usually meant for electrical component storage. It hadn't seemed wise to open it during her earlier search, but now that One wasn't watching...

_Aha!_ The first drawer she'd pulled open confirmed her hunch: it was full of capacitors of varying sizes. The second was resistors; the third, rolls of solder.

The last of the materials she needed to finish her arm repairs.

Gaige pushed the drawer shut and hurried back to where she'd been standing when One left. A split second later, the door opened and her captor walked back in, holding a small device. He tossed it to her and resumed staring without a word.

"Thanks so much for your cooperation and sunny personality," Gaige said, sarcasm dripping from her tone. She examined the device. It didn't look like much; just a small rectangle a few inches long. "What's this? Lipstick?"

A strange sound made Gaige look over at One. It wasn't until a :] symbol flashed onto his faceplate that she realized he was laughing at her. "You've been using old tech for so long It's a wonder your mind isn't gone. Just tap the end twice Then wait for the lights."

Gaige did so. A blue light started to blink on one end of the rectangle, and then a hologram flashed into the air, three feet long and a foot wide. Projected into the air were the schematics.

"Well done! You've just turned it on." One laughed again.

Gaige tried to ignore him and started going over the diagrams in the air. She realized quickly that she could control the image with a few basic hand movements. "Nice toy. Puts everything planetside to shame, that's for sure. Must've cost you a bundle." She looked at him through the hologram. "Is that why you were designed to be an assassin? Your creator sends you and Zero out, then collects the payment?"

"_Silence._" One's voice caught her off guard. It was a hiss, full of hatred and bitterness.

_Huh. That's interesting._ "It's a smart move," Gaige said blithely, testing her luck. "Zero's pretty good at killing, and I know firsthand that you can fight. Your boss must have a client list a mile lo-"

"_SHUT UP!_" One's blade lashed out, the blade stabbing through the holographic display and halting barely a half inch from Gaige's face. "My father had no wish to slay others! He thought we should help one another! But _Zero_," the hate in his voice amplified, "chose killing instead, To add to the dead... So now I must slay my own brother."

Gaige backed up slowly, moving away from the sword. "Let me... let me get this straight. Zero wasn't built an assassin? Neither of you were?"

One shook his head, and lowered his sword. His grip on the hilt was very tight. "Zero was built as a _doctor. _A healer, not meant for this slaughter! But to father's dismay He threw that away Becoming instead a great monster."

Gaige sat down on the wall-mounted workbench, trying to get her head around this revelation about her friend. "Zero was supposed to be a _doctor?_ He's never shown any interest in medicine." She looked at One, eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Zero came to Pandora looking for a challenge. Is that what happened? Being a doctor wasn't challenging enough for him?"

One nodded. "With healing he became dejected. But killing the rich and protected? Now _there_ was a test That held his interest, So his focus to that he directed."

"And you?" Gaige asked. "You said you had to kill Zero. Why? Because he didn't want to do what your designer wanted?"

He didn't reply, and just pointed to the holographic schematics.

"Fine, fine, back to work," she groused. "Let's see what we've got here..."

The plans were a huge help. Gaige finally had the sheet music to the symphony of robotic design laid out in front of her, and that let her make great strides. With a few hours of study, she was ready to start working on the android's incomplete left arm.

"Your builder was an absolute _genius,_" Gaige commented, walking back to the workbench. "Aside from all the tricks you'd expect from an android, this one has a holomorphic subsystem. It'll be able to look like anything it wants. With the right application of forcefields, its body won't even feel like metal." She rummaged around the drawers, looking for the right tools. "What's the logic on that, One? It's grade-A spy stuff. Not much use in the public sector."

"I don't always know Father's goal," One admitted, "But my trust in him was total. Do as he wished And make your work swift." He gazed down at the still figure. "I would see my brother made whole."

"He'll be something to see, that's for sure," Gaige said. "I think these designs are ten or twenty years beyond the public sector. Probably at least that much in front of any military out there, too." Gaige picked up a soldering iron and a roll of the flexible metal with it. "So why did you think I could finish his work? Deathtrap was that impressive? I mean, he's fantastic, of course," she went on, setting up clamps on the table, "but he's nowhere _near_ your sophistication." She turned around. "So why me?"

One shrugged. "Call it a moment of whimsy. My reasons are really quite flimsy. But you're the first that I've found This whole galaxy 'round That may prove yet a... Da Vinci."

Gaige cocked an eyebrow and smirked. "That was a pretty tortured rhyme. Almost got yourself stuck, huh?" With a loud _click,_ she removed the android's left arm and brought it over to the workbench. She clamped it into place and began examining the circuit pathways. "Well, I'm pretty sure I can handle the physical part of things. It's the programming that I'm not sure of. Deathtrap's AI is mostly combat oriented, and even without sentience he has some flaws. I might be able to work out personality subroutines eventually, but who knows how long _that_ would take."

"Just finish your work on the body," One ordered. "I don't want his frame to be shoddy. When it comes to the mind, I think that you'll find I've already arranged for a copy."

Gaige paused in mid-reach for a welding torch. "What does _that_ mean?"

One might have answered, but he never got the chance. A familiar voice crackled through the ship's intercom. [You two ready to go?]

Gaige's head whipped toward the speaker the voice had come from, eyes wide in recognition. "That's Maya!"

A second voice answered, equally recognizable. [Yeah, Krieg's getting him now. I just wish Moxxi had been able to think up something else.]

"Axton!"

[Just have to make due. You'll need him in Opportunity. Sal and I are headed for Tundra Express right now.]

[Right. Good-]

The transmission abruptly cut off. Gaige saw One take his hand off a wall switch she assumed controlled the intercom. She glared at him. "What did you do, tap my ECHO unit to spy on us?"

He didn't answer.

"It won't do you any good," Gaige said fiercely. "They ignored my message, which means they're coming after you. And if this _is_ your ship we're in right now, they _will_ find it." She grinned savagely. "Now _you're_ the one being hunted. And we're _good_ at that. It's in our name and everything."

One pulled his sword. "Their searching will fail to matter. My engine's trail is scattered. Return to your task; Twice, I won't ask. And pay you no mind to their chatter."

"Oh, I'll keep going," she said coldly. "But now it's a race to see if I can finish before they get here. If I do, great. If not..." she shrugged nonchalantly. "It just means I can work on this without you standing over my shoulder, since they'll have killed you." Gaige tried hard not to look at him and decided to twist the verbal knife a little more. "I wonder if Zero will know how to program this android."

Gaige expected another outburst from One, possibly even a physical blow this time. What she got was almost more chilling: total, icy silence. For thirty seconds, she kept her mouth shut and eyes glued on the arm in front of her. Then, she heard him walk across the room, open the door, and leave. The door slid shut and beeped as it locked.

She risked a quick glance to make sure she was alone, then darted over to the airlock window. She had to know one thing...

Sky. More importantly, _blue_ sky. _We're not in orbit, then. _Gaige took an even faster look at the door controls and saw they were fairly simple, and for a split second considered making a run for it. Then she glanced at the android, and the idea faded. _No. But now _is _the time to take care of the other thing..._

Gaige scurried back to the work bench and laid her own arm on it. Keeping as still as possible, she started the repairs on the digistruct circuits in her forearm. One wasn't going to let the others do anything to try and track his ship now, she was sure of that. Maybe he'd just fly to a new location, or maybe he'd do something else. Whatever it was, Gaige would be alone for however long it took One to set his reaction in motion. Any progress she could make on her arm would be critical to her eventual escape.

She just hoped her friends were up to taking on whatever One threw at them.

* * *

One stalked out of the workshop, fury and determination swirling in his mind. He made certain the room was locked down, then headed for the cockpit.

The family deserter programming his unawakened brother. The idea made him sick. There was no chance he would allow that. His brother the traitor wouldn't even be allowed _near_ this ship, One would make certain of that.

One hadn't expected anyone on this planet to even _think_ of tracking the engine trail, much less actually have the ability to do it. Clearly, he'd underestimated the locals. Fortunately, he still had the upper hand. Their local ECHO system was so primitive, he hadn't even needed to tap into the girl's unit the way she'd thought; the ship could intercept any transmissions made over the planetary network with ease. He would always hear whatever plans they discussed over their network.

Although, One had to admit, he hadn't expected those transmissions to be piped over the ship's intercom that way. He'd have to correct the oversight. It wouldn't do for the girl to hear her friends' deaths broadcast throughout the ship.

One opened the door to the cockpit and headed for the main pilot's seat. There were three other chairs as well, each dedicated to other systems. Under ideal conditions, the ship was meant for a crew of four, but it was far from necessary. Maybe one day he'd have a full crew, but for now, running a small ship like this alone was a simple task.

If the girl could successfully complete his brother, maybe she'd even be the one to give him that crew. Worth considering, despite the difficulties it would entail.

A matter for later, though. One accessed his flight records, checking to see if his entry vector had taken him over either of the areas mentioned in transmission. He started with the area they'd called Opportunity. One checked his maps, and was pleased to see that would be a dead end. His engine trail went nowhere near that city.

Still, there was something to be gained. It was technologically advanced, with digistruct pillars everywhere. And, since the _Terminus_ experiment proved he had the ability to hack digistruct pillars at will...

He was broke into the mainframe in a few minutes, and made an unpleasant discovery. There wasn't a great deal of power left in the city's batteries. Less, even, than had been in the _Terminus'_ reserves.

If he'd been human, One would've frowned. He had wanted to send in the biggest units in the city's digistruct arsenal, but that was infeasible. There just wasn't enough power left to make sufficient numbers of those units to stop the Vault Hunters. The best he could do was set the system to make as much trouble as it could for the team headed there.

His work with Opportunity complete, One turned his focus to the area referred to as "Tundra Express." Fairly far north, a lot of ice and snow...

His fist clenched. He _had _made a course change there, and the ion signature was still largely intact. If they could get a scan on it, it could narrow their search. It might not get the girl's friends all the way to his location, but it would get them closer than he liked.

Moving the ship wasn't an option. Powering up the engines would give off a huge amount of energy, probably enough for the floating scrapheap he'd abducted the girl from to detect. Once that happened, One had no doubt that all of her friends would come to her rescue. He was good, but not skilled enough to take on all the remaining Vault Hunters alone, especially when one of them was his brother.

One briefly considered destroying their city and her friends with the ship's guns, but dismissed the idea. If he did that, she would _know_ her friends were dead, instead of being able to hold out hope of rescue. He'd lose even her reluctant cooperation, and she'd probably make a suicidal attack, just to spite him.

_Unacceptable._ Two years of searching across six galaxies, and she was the first one that had been able to even _read_ his father's schematics. He couldn't risk it, couldn't risk being the last of his father's creations.

Of course, there was another option, one that wasn't available for such a sterile environment as Opportunity.

One entered a few commands, and a wall compartment slid open. It held a rack of six vials, one empty, five containing a thick, sluggish purple liquid. He pressed a few more buttons, and one of the vials began to drain slowly.

Each vial was connected to a small, flexible tube. That, in turn, split and connected to six small robots, each about the size of a bumblebee. Once the liquid had been evenly distributed between them, One pressed another button and launched the machines into the planet's atmosphere.

He repeated the process until all six vials were empty. In a few minutes, all thirty bots would reach this 'Tundra Express' and begin scanning the local lifeforms. When they found suitable targets, the liquid would be dispersed as gas. Anything that inhaled it would begin to mutate and become violently aggressive.

One leaned back, satisfied. There was the off chance the girl's friends might breathe the gas, which would be a supreme irony. More than likely, however, the machines would home in on the larger animal populations, and that would be enough for his purposes.

After all, if one vial of substance had created a bullymong that almost killed six Vault Hunters, surely five vial's worth of mutations would be enough to kill two of them.

* * *

[Eagle-eyed readers may note familial similarities between Zero and One relating to their sense of humor.]

[In addition to my usual thanks for reading, I'd like to throw some heartfelt appreciation out to everyone that has followed, favorited, reviewed, or just plain read this since I started, this past week especially. Rest assured, whatever happens after the end, this story _will_ be completed on schedule.]

[Tune in next week for some action dedicated to all the Krieg fans. See you then!]


	10. Krieg Kong

Opportunity had been meant as Hyperion's flagship city, first permanent bastion planetside, and Handsome Jack's personal egopolis. With his death and the subsequent destruction of the moonbase, it had become the tombstone of Hyperion's Pandora efforts. Half finished buildings stood abandoned, already beginning to decay from the elements.

The city had remained strangely vacant since Hyperion's final defeat. No animals had built nests or dens in the structures. The plants left by Hyperion gardeners had withered and died, rather than spread unchecked. Not even the planet's omnipresent bandit population had taken to squatting in the ruins.

If Axton had been a more philosophical man, he might have thought that the planet itself had doomed Opportunity to die alone. Being the literal minded soldier he was, however... "I _hate_ empty cities," he groused. "Oh, sure, if they're _actually_ empty you've got nothing to worry about. The trouble is there's no way to _know_ if they're actually empty until you either leave, or something starts attacking you. Before that, you're creepin' around, white knucklin' your gun, halfway to _prayin' _for the shooting start, just so it breaks the damn silence." He glanced at Krieg. "Am I making any sense?"

Krieg grunted and tugged at the shoulder straps to his burden. "A desert shark wants to fly with a hummingbird. See a witch doctor for sunrise and sunset."

Axton stared for second, then just shook his head and moved on. "You know, there _are_ times I think I get you. Mostly, though, you just confuse the hell outta me."

"Hey, Minion 1? How close are we?" a voice asked from behind Krieg. "I'm getting a little tired of staring at the sky back here."

"_You_'_re_ the one whose greatest weakness is stairs," Axton retorted. "Opportunity's full of 'em. You either ride Kreig's back, or he tosses you down every flight we come to, and back _up_ on the way out."

"Curse you, steadily-decaying-and-probably-not-Handome-Anymore-Jack!" Claptrap shouted angrily, waving his hands at the heavens. "Even from beyond the grave you inconvenience me!"

"You and me both," Axton muttered. "I _really_ wish Moxxi had come up with a plan B."

"Probably could have, if you wanted to wait a while longer," Claptrap pointed out. "But there's no time for that. We've gotta save Minion 5!"

"And since you can talk to my turret software _and_ Hyperion's mainframe, you're the fastest way to do that, I _know,_" Axton growled. "Come on, Krieg. Let's pick up the pace."

Krieg nodded and motioned with his rusted, savage looking rifle. "Foghorn station in the root cellar."

Axton gave the gun an uneasy look. "Just make sure that I'm behind you if you have to fire that thing. I know you prefer your buzzsaw, but you could at _least _use a gun that doesn't look like it's going to fly apart at the seams every time you pull the trigger. God knows there's enough of 'em laying around."

Krieg just growled and stomped down the stairs to the communication center doors.

"Whoo-hoo! Take that AGAIN, stairs! Minion 6, you're the best pack mule a Claptrap could ever hope for!" Claptrap squirmed in his harness a little, trying to get a look at the door. "This is it! You can set me down now, Minion 6! I'm ready to do my part!"

"Just don't foul up my turrets," Axton warned as Krieg unbuckled his harness and lowered the little robot to the ground. "I still need to be able to use 'em after you're done here."

"No worries, Minion 1! Talking to other computers is one of the things I do best! Especially when they're sexy little turrets!"

Axton stared at him for a minute, then leveled his assault rifle. "Tell you what, boy-o. Poker nights or no, you'll treat my darlin' with as much respect as you treat yourself. Otherwise, I'll make sure your species is extinct by the end of the day."

Claptrap leaned close Axton's ECHO. "See that?" he asked in a stage whisper. "I _told_ you there was nothing to worry about! He's all _about_ you!" He looked at Axton. "She says she was worried you might be planning to marry her off after the whole Deathtrap/Mongzilla incident. I said she was crazy, but hey, you know women!"

Axton's stare had switched from protectively malicious to dumbfounded. "How did you-"

"Enough salmoning!" Krieg shouted. "Time to throw the raven!"

"Right," Axton shook his head and motioned to the control console. "Over there, Claptrap. Let's get this over with."

"Sure thing, buddy!" Claptrap rolled over the the center console and hunted around for a second. "Here we go! Input jack!" He plugged a hand into a horizontal slot in the side of the console, and the computer station flashed to life. "All set, Minion 1! Now I just need your ECHO!"

"Second time in two days I've given this up," Axton grumbled, handing over the device. "At least there's no killer monster crawling up a cliff this time." He turned to Krieg. "Keep an eye outside, will ya? Just to be safe."

"If you hear anything, beep the horn twice," Krieg agreed, and walked outside.

Claptrap had hooked the device under his free arm. "Okay, I'm interfacing with your turret controls now! This'll just take a min-"

There was a _bang_ like a grenade, and Claptrap shot away from the console and across the room. The expulsion was forceful enough to throw him through the wall and out of sight, leaving a trapezoidal hole behind. A wisp of smoke rose from inside.

Axton bent over and looked in, halfway between amused and horrified. "My gear okay?"

Claptrap coughed and crawled his way out. A cluster of yellow wires was tangled around his antenna, but he didn't seem to notice. "Oof...Minion! We've got trouble!"

"I'll say," Axton said wryly. "Can you try again? _Without_ blowing yourself up, this time."

"That wasn't my fault, Minion! That console was _programmed _to blow! It's a trap!"

"What?!"

"_No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!_"

The sound of Krieg's roar was followed by gunfire. "Oh, _hell_." Axton sprinted outside. "What's going-" He broke off.

Huge, four winged Surveyors were swooping through the air, diving bombing Krieg with energy blasts. Krieg ripped off another burst of gunfire, and one exploded, but there were dozens more in the air.

"Where the _hell_ did these come from?!" Axton yelled, opening fire.

"Magician's post!" Krieg shouted back, still firing. "Waking up all over Chance!"

Between rifle bursts, Axton managed to catch a glimpse of light coming from the digistruct pillars. "Crap!" He fired at another Surveryor, but the nimble aircraft dodged out the way and swooped off. "Anything other than these yet?"

"Nothing but flies!" Krieg shouted. "Thick as mud, though!"

"Then we've got a problem," Axton said grimly. "We need more time to get the locator pulse out. Try and hold them off!"

"This far, no farther!" Krieg roared.

"I'll take that as a yes," Axton said. He ducked back into the comm room. "Trappy! Get plugged back in!"

"Wouldn't do any good, Minion 1!" Claptrap lamented. "The console's burned out. The power surge wrecked it."

Axton cursed. "We're up to our eyes in Surveyors out there. Can't you do _anything?"_

"Not from here," Claptrap moaned. "The only thing we could still try is plugging right into the transmitter itself. That's not accessible from the mainframe, so it's not hackable."

"And it won't blow you away again," Axton said, nodding. "Great, let's get going. Where is it?"

"Ummm... that's a problem," Claptrap said hesitantly.

"_Where, _Claptrap?!"

"Well... you know that big building with the light shooting out of the top?"

"That's the one? What floor?"

"Right at the beam of light. It's where the antenna base is."

"You mean all the way on the _roof?"_ Axton demanded.

Claptrap nodded, a full body motion for him. The wires wrapped around his antenna bobbed.

"Great." He turned to the door, raising his gun. "Stick close, and try not to let them hit you."

"You got it, Minion 1!"

Axton darted out, firing into the air. "We've gotta get to the main building!" He yelled. "The beam of light at the top! Strap on Claptrap, I'll cover you!"

"No room for jell-o!" Krieg shouted.

Before Axton could work out what _that_ meant, Kreig had stowed his gun and seized Claptrap, tucking the robot under his left arm like a football. In the blink of an eye, he leapt into the air, vaulting over the stairs. He landed on the railing, leapt again, and vanished.

Axton blinked in surprise. "_Damn _that was fast." He fired off a few more rounds at the Surveyors, then sprinted up the stairs himself, trying to see where Krieg had gone. As he reached the top, he screeched to a halt and stared at the side of the building in amazement, gun dropping to his side.

Krieg was scaling the building from the outside. He wasn't wasting time looking for handholds in the smooth glass face, either. From the sound of shattering glass, he seemed to be simply stabbing his fingers through the windows and dragging himself up that way. The aptly titled psycho was _fast_, already forty feet up and still going strong.

Claptrap didn't seem too happy about it. Axton could hear him screaming. It might have been a trick of the light, but he also thought he could see the gold wires bobbing at the top of his head.

A Surveyor strafed Krieg, splattering his path with plasma bursts. Axton snapped out of his funk and took aim, blasting at the flyer. His bullets clipped the wing, and the small plane spiraled off in a plume of smoke and fire.

Unfortunately for Krieg, there were at least a dozen more, and they were _all _focused on him now. Even worse, they were rapidly moving out of Axton's range.

"Out of range of my assault rifle, can't deploy my turrets, and the bogeys are flying _really_ close to my friend."Axton exhaled sharply and dropped to one knee. "Zero, I really wish _you_ were here right now." He swapped his assault weapon for a sniper rifle, and took a bead on Krieg. "Hang on, buddy..." He squeezed the trigger, and another Surveyor exploded.

Krieg didn't seem to notice. He kept climbing, one handed, never slowing or wavering. His grip on Claptrap never seemed to loosen, although the robot kept screaming the whole way up. Axton watched from the ground, sniping when he could, not even aware he was holding his breath.

But sniping was not Axton's forte. For every Surveyor he killed, he ended up firing at least seven rounds. He quickly depleted his sniper rifle ammunition, and the Surveyors continued to peck away at Krieg.

Despite the constant strafing from the planes, they reached the top. Through the scope of his empty gun, Axton saw Krieg set Claptrap down. The little robot finally stopped screeching and scurried in closer to the center of the roof, presumably to the antenna. Axton hoped he was successful in getting the locator pulse out.

Krieg was focused on drawing off the Surveyors. He roared wordlessly, pounding his chest, _daring_ the flying annoyances to challenge him. One swooped in close, and Krieg swatted it out of the air with his axe.

"_Shoot _the damn things," Axton said, teeth clenched. "Forget the axe, _shoot_ them!"

Three Surveyors left, and their shots were getting closer. Krieg swung again, and another exploded into fire. He spun into a backhand, and then there was one.

But the move had put him out of position and too near the edge. The final Surveyor plunged toward Krieg's exposed back and slammed into him, exploding and throwing him into the air.

"_KRIEG! NOOOOOOO!"_

Axton's scream could do nothing to halt his friend's fall to the ground. It seemed to take forever as he twisted and flailed, and finally-

_Crashed_.

Axton raced over to the base of the tower where Krieg had fallen. The masked man was lying on his back, arms spread and visible eye closed. "Krieg! Can you hear me?!"

Nothing.

Axton dropped to his knees and grabbed Krieg's hand. "Don't do this, man," he said, voice tight. His fingers felt at Krieg's wrist for a pulse. "You wouldn't die while Maya's still around, would you?"

For a few more gut-wrenching seconds, there was still nothing. Then, his eye fluttered and rolled open behind the mask. "Twas it beauty?" Krieg asked dazedly. He pushed himself up, groaning. "She's a cruel mistress."

Axton's breath rushed out in a huge sigh of relief. "Holy _hell _man, don't do that to me." He stood, grabbing the bigger man's wrist and pulling him up. "You are _damn _lucky your shields absorbed all the impact on that fall. I wasn't sure they would."

Krieg chuckled and adjusted his mask. "Hear the lamentations of their women." He threw his head back, arms wide, and yelled, "Noooooo!"

Axton felt his face redden. "That's between you and me, pal. Nobody else hears about that, or I'll push you off Sanctuary myself." He looked up the side of the tower. "Come on. Let's go see if Trappy got what we need."

"Once more into the breach?" Krieg asked, his voice weary and reluctant.

"I didn't say climb the outside of the building again," Axton pointed out. He walked over to one of the doors into the tower. "You know you could've used an elevator to get up there, right?"

Krieg was silent for a long minute. Finally, he said in a surprisingly good mimic of Axton's voice, "That's between you and me, pal. Nobody else hears about that, or I'll push you off Sanctuary myself."

Axton cocked an eyebrow. "Huh."

* * *

[Inspiration takes you to some odd places. Glad you're aboard for the ride!]

[Next week we go north of the Wall. Guest stars and oddities abound in... a chapter name I haven't figured out yet. Always eager to hear your thoughts, and thanks for reading!]

[Also, despite the lies of FFN's update system, I've decided to offer myself up as beta reader. You've all been kind enough to look over my work; maybe I can return the favor.]


	11. Express concerns

Maya and Salvador materialized into the frigid air of the Tundra Express. Maya shivered as she started up Zero's scanner. "Ugh. I hate the cold."

"You're gonna _love_ Pandoran winters, then," Salvador said, grinning. "Years of cold weather _everywhere._"

"In that case, I'm going to be one of two places: Wam Bam Island, or _off-planet_." The scanner finished booting, and Maya examined the screen. "Okay, there we go. I'm getting a read on the ion signature. Hm." She frowned. "It's not as clear as we need. It looks like we need to get a little closer."

"Closer? To a point in the sky?"

"Yep."

"How much closer? Ten feet? Twenty? As far as you can throw me while I hold the scanner up?"

"Nothing so simple, I'm afraid," Maya said. "This thing's range is pretty good, but we're going to need at least two or three hundred feet of altitude." She looked at him. "We need a buzzard."

Salvador grinned. "And the only place to get one is a bandit camp. That means we'll have to fight our way _through_ a camp and steal one." He pulled his second minigun and grinned ferally. "I'm _so_ disappointed."

"Well, try not to let your 'disappointment' slow you down," Maya advised, pulling out her SMG. "The readings I _can_ get show that we don't have too long to get a good scan on that trail. Let's- _behind_ _you!_"

Maya didn't even have time to raise her weapon. She shouted her warning, and then the slavering, misshapen, vicious looking _thing_ hurled itself at Salvador from the canyon wall, an earsplitting shriek rending the air-

A shriek that ended prematurely as Sal's gunfire scissored the creature in half. The bits fell to the ground, smoking and oozing. He blew the smoke from his barrel and looked at Maya playfully. "You were saying?"

"Fine, next time I'll let it pounce on you first." She bent over, looking at the bizarre remains. "What _is _it?"

"Whatever it is, it's got friends!" Salvador yelled. "_Incoming_!"

Maya's head snapped up in time to see a wave of skittering horrors coming towards them, racing up from all over the Express. Instinctively, she flicked her hand. A few of the creatures were snagged by the gravity wave, and several more yanked back by the miniature singularity. The rest poured on, an unrelenting tide of insectoid bodies.

Fortunately, this tide could be held back by gunfire.

Maya and Salvador's fire washed over the encroaching horde, shredding bodies and turning the snow florescent with the various fluids of the targets. The creatures shrieked as they died, but more came, trampling each other in their eagerness to reach the Vault Hunters.

Then, it stopped.

The halt of the creatures was as abrupt as their attack. The swarm simply turned away and skittered off into the Tundra, out of sight and range.

Maya blinked sweat out of her eyes and rose out of the kneeling position she hadn't even realized she'd dropped into. "What the...? Where are they going?"

"Dunno," Salvador said. "Guess we're just too much for 'em, no?"

Maya looked around, and felt her heart sink. "That's not the only thing we were too much for." The fast travel station was in ruins, its circuits strewn all over the ground. The holographic display was out, and its exposed innards were sparking. Maya sighed as she examined it. "Well, this is one station we're not getting home with."

"That... that wasn't me, was it?" Salvador asked sheepishly.

"Call it a team effort," she said wryly. "There are definitely some of my bullet holes here, too."

Salvador sighed. "Could be worse. There's still the station in the farmhouse basement, at least."

Before Maya could answer, the thunder of explosions rippled through air, and their ECHOs crackled to life. [Come and get it, suckas!]

"_Tina!_"

Both Hunters started sprinting across the field, heading for their friend's home. "Tina! Tina, can you hear me?!" Maya shouted. "What's going on?!"

[Hey, girlfriend!] Tina's voice was peppy enough, but they still caught the undercurrent of strain. [It looks like Madame von Bartlesby finally decided to get even! She sent her servants after me!]

Salvador ripped off a few shots, obliterating a stray creature. "_Chica_, are you sayin' these are _varkids?_"

[Hell _yes_, they're varkids! And whatever you do, don't let 'em morph!]

They rounded the corner near the varkid ranch, and skidded to a halt. "Uh... that could be a problem."

There were about forty undulating, swelling pods blocking their path.

[_Kill 'em, shawty! Blow those bitches away!_]

The panic in Tina's voice galvanized them into action. Their fire raked across the pods, shredding a cluster of the fluid-filled sacs.

Unfortunately, they only got a handful before the rest burst.

Maya had seen varkid mutation, both natural and artificial, before. Even under the best circumstances, it wasn't pretty. These... were _not_ the best of circumstances.

The things that hatched from these warped varkid pods were nightmarish horrors, all legs and wings and fangs, twice the size of standard adult varkids... and they were all headed straight for them. The air flashed and Maya hurled a singularity, but this time, it barely slowed their advance. Even worse, their guns didn't seem to be doing any damage. The varkids just shrugged off the fire and kept coming, their slavering jaws clacking in menace.

"_Maya, DROP!_"

She knew that tone. There was just enough time before Maya threw her arms over her head to see Salvador pull both his biggest rocket launchers.

"_EAT LEAD, PENDEJOS!_"

When she looked up after the roars and shockwaves had subsided, all that was left were a few smoldering remains and a lot of craters. "Nice work," she said, a little uneasily.

"Too bad it was a one-off," Salvador grunted. "Those little bastards took _all_ my rockets."

"Worry about that later," Maya admonished, scrambling up. "Tina's still in trouble!"

Another volley of explosions resounded through the Express. "Least she's still fighting!" Salvador laughed. "Kid's got spirit!"

They came to the path that led to Tina's cave and stared in disbelief. "Apparently," Maya finally managed, "kid also had a _ton_ of ammo."

Tina had defended her home with the ferocity of a junkyard dog. Varkid body parts were strewn everywhere, blast marks covered nearly all the surrounding area, and there were several fires burning merrily away.

"Sup, suckas?" Tina waved to them from the entrance to her cave. She was leaning heavily on the wall and breathing hard, her face covered in soot and varkid blood. Lying at her feet, barrel still smoking, was the biggest assault rifle they'd ever seen. "You just missed the end of the party!"

"Are you alright?" Maya asked, hurrying over and checking for wounds. "Did any of them get you?"

"Naaaah, they's just a buncha pushovers," Tina said with forced nonchalance. "Good thing Mr. Torgue sent me this sweetheart, though." She tapped the rifle with her foot. "And Princess Fluffybutt helped turn away a few of the more _rude_ gentleman callers."

Salvador cast an appreciative eye over the gun, but kept both his weapons aimed in either direction. "Got another one of those?"

"Sorry, girl, just the one, and it's empty," Tina sighed. "_And _I lost my ammo machine in the raid. Good thing those bugs ran off when they did."

"What _happened_ up here?" Maya asked. "Do you have any idea what made them change like that?"

"Ain't just them," Tina said, collapsing to the ground. "It started like an hour ago, crazy gunfire in the bandit camps. They usually shoot each other up at least once a day, but this was worse. I heard yelling, and snuck out to take a look." She hugged her knees and suddenly looked very young. "Something... _happened_ to 'em. Half of 'em were all warped and twisted, and they were tearing up the rest of them."

"And then the varkids mutated?" Maya asked grimly.

Tina nodded jerkily. "They started swarming out of their nests like that. Some of them died fast, but others just kept changing. Some weren't even changed, but they got eaten by the ones that were. They..." she swallowed hard and pressed on. "They went after the bandits next. Then they came after _me._"

"Nice job fending them off," Salvador said encouragingly. "Real badass work."

"They ran away," Tina shrugged. "Not sure why."

"We're not waiting around to find out," Maya said, standing. "We're getting you out of here _now_."

"What's the plan?" Salvador asked. "Head for the farmhouse?"

Maya nodded. "Have to, with the other fast travel station out. We'll get Tina to Sanctuary from there, and then we keep going to the buzzard academy."

"Wait, _what?_" Tina looked shocked. "You're _staying?_"

"We've got a mission to finish," Maya said grimly. "Someone broke into Sanctuary last night. He abducted Gaige, almost killed Brick, and we need to get airborne in order to track his ship. Once we get you out-"

"No!"

Both adults looked at her in surprise. "It's not safe, Tina," Maya insisted. "We _have_ to get you out of here!"

"Then take me on the buzzard!" Tina insisted. "If some punkass bitch kidnapped my homegirl and ganked my boy, I'm gonna help you find his sorry butt! Now take me with you!"

Salvador grinned. "We always knew the kid had spirit."

"Too much, sometimes." Maya looked at Tina's set-in-stone expression and sighed, recognizing a losing fight when she saw one. "Okay, then. You up to running?"

Tina grinned, a little of her usual cheerful fire showing through the exhaustion and dirt on her face. "You know it, shawty! Let's haul!"

"Up we go, then." Maya grabbed Tina's hand and pulled the girl to her feet. "Keep close to the train tracks, Sal," Maya instructed. "There aren't as many nests by them. Maybe they'll be clearer than anything else."

Salvador nodded and trotted to the left, heading between the boulders that flanked Tina's cave. "At least Tina probably cleared that hive when- oh, _blech_." He slammed to a halt, leveling his guns.

The whole area in front of the train station compound was teeming with varkids, but they were ignoring the three humans. Instead, they had fallen on each other, biting and tearing at one another with reckless abandon. There didn't seem to be any allegiances, no organization, no coordination between the creatures. The insects were just _killing_ each other.

They weren't the smaller larval forms, either. The entire battling swarm was made of the larger, incredibly bullet-resistant adult types. As they watched in fascinated disgust, several varkid pods in the center of the melee burst, spewing even bigger, more vicious forms. Triple the size of the larvals, and nearly half again as large as a normal badass varkid, these new ones instantly rejoined the fray, devouring their smaller kin as fast as they could.

"Third stage morphs," Maya whispered. "They look... different."

"They look _tougher_," Salvador noticed. "And healthier. Not so much leaking around the edges."

"Is _this _why they ran off?" Maya wondered in fascinated revulsion. "So they could fight and kill each other? So they could force themselves to _evolve?_"

Tina had clamped onto Maya's hand very tightly. "We gotta go. We gotta go _now._"

Maya shook her head, trying to focus. "Right. Keep following those tracks, Sal. We're definitely not getting in the front door, but maybe we can bypass the whole mess if we go around the back."

"You sure?" Salvador asked, a trifle wistfully. "There's so _many_ targets..."

"_Gaige,_ Sal."

"Right, sorry." He got moving.

For the first time, luck was with them. The varkid nests near the train tracks were empty. From the sheer volume of the insect's high pitched shrieks echoing around them, it sounded like all the inhabitants were clustered at Tundra Express' interior battling each other.

"Next stop on this tour of the Tundra Express, Buzzard Academy," Salvador grunted. "Tina, are there any bandits left?"

Tina shuddered. "Hope not. They reminded me of... stuff." She rubbed at her eyes savagely. "They're better off dead."

Maya took Tina's hand again. "Come on. The sooner we're airborne, the better."

Things were mercifully empty as they ran towards the bandit settlement. As they reached the narrow entrance to the compound, Salvador slowed to a walk and motioned for the girls to stop. They waited as he poked his head in, then waved them forward. "Looks clear. Where's the buzzard control center?"

"Third floor, near missile repair," Tina said, looking around uneasily.

"Hang on, sweetie," Maya reassured her. "We won't be in here long."

"nEw pReSEnTs?!"

Tina shrieked.

Maya whirled around, shoving the girl behind her and firing reflexively. As she spun, she had a brief impression of a twisted, misshapen form lurching towards them on two bent limbs, skin cracked and streaming. Then her weapon ignited the target, and for the first time, fire made her enemy easier to look at.

It also, fortunately, killed fast. The warped goliath fell to the ground, but another misshapen mass of humanity threw itself out of a nearby building, staggering towards them. Maya shifted her fire, and heard Salvador open up behind her-

"They're coming from all sides!" he yelled. "We're surrounded!"

"Not for long!" Maya's tattoo's flashed, the air surged, and suddenly the scattered half dozen maimed bandits were clustered around one of their levitating, mutilated comrades. Salvador spun, tracking his target as it was sucked through the air, his fire converging with Maya's as they shredded their opponents.

One of the horrors started to claw its way clear of the mass of bodies, shrieking in rage and pain. Maya shifted her aim, but it fell before she could fire, a bullethole appearing in the middle of its blistered, bleeding forehead.

Maya glanced to her left, startled. Tina had opened fire with a pistol, her face a tortured mask of fury and disgust. She fired again and again, picking off targets with a precision Maya wouldn't have expected from her.

Finally, the last of the tortured souls lay quiet on the ground. Maya panned her weapon around, checking the area. "See anyone else, Sal?"

"No, looks like we're clear!" He trotted back to the point. "Let's get moving."

"Right." May turned to Tina. "Come on. Don't look, let's just go."

Tina ignored her. Instead, she shoved her pistol into her belt and walked over to the nearest fallen goliath, determination etched into her expression.

"Tina? What are you...?"

Maya trailed off. Tina was staring down at the remains, holding her hand up to Maya. She stayed like that for a few seconds. Then, with sudden ferocity, she kicked the goliath's dangling skull.

Salvador whistled appreciatively as the grisly projectile went flying over the rooftops. "Not bad, _chica_. You should go out for the Pandoran football league."

Tina bounced back over, grinning with a little too much force and a maniacal edge- but at least she was grinning. "Maybe I will. But it's the _soccer_ league, girl."

"Oh, ho ho, don't even _start _with that one!"

Maya took point and let Salvador keep Tina talking. It prevented her from dwelling too much on the charred bodies, twisted remains, blood splashes, and other various reminders that something truly horrific had just happened here.

Fortunately, nothing else attacked them, so Salvador was able to keep up the running chatter until they reached the buzzard control center. "Here we go," Maya said. "Tina, you keep watch from the edge of the launch pad. Yell if you see any more varkids coming."

"You got it, girlfriend!"

"Sal, get ready." Maya grabbed the door handle and stood off to one side.

Salvador nodded and lined up his gun. Maya twisted the handle and kicked the door inward-

Nothing. The control center was empty.

"Huh." Salvador lowered his gun. "I've never been so disappointed and relieved at the same time."

"Back home, we call that 'ambivalence'," Maya said absently. "Okay, here...we...go!" She punched one final control, and a buzzard rotated into view on the platform. "Our ride awaits."

"_Fantastico_!" Salvador paused. "Who's going to fly it?"

Time stopped. Even the varkid shrieks seemed to freeze in the air.

Finally, Maya and Salvador looked at each other. Salvador smiled in mad desperation. "Hey, no problem, right? I mean, we kill these pilots all the time. That makes us smarter than them, no? That means we should be able to figure out how to fly one of these, no problem!"

"You logic is astounding," Maya said dryly. She walked over and sat in the cockpit. "It doesn't _look _bad... if I can just figure out how to start it..."

"Twist the key over there, and pull back on the stick," Tina said, pointing. "That'll start bringing up the throttle. The engines can lift us off once we hit 1500 rpm."

Time didn't stop for Tina, but it had the decency to slow down. "You know how to fly these things?" Maya managed to get out.

"Brick's been giving me lessons," Tina said nonchalantly.

"Is that a yes or no?"

"Umm... sort of. He always rode with me, just in case. " She brightened. "But he let me do all the actual piloting."

"So this would be your first _solo_ flight." Maya sighed. "Well, it's more than we had. Sal, strap into the left seat, and keep your guns ready. I don't know how long this scan will take, and you'll have keep shooting at everything the whole time I'm at it."

Salvador hefted his guns and grinned. "I love every part of what you just said!"

"Of course you do." Maya forced herself to not tense up. "Tina... take the stick. You're in charge of this one."

"_Awesome!_" Tina jumped into the pilot's seat, fastened the restraint harness, and manipulated a few controls.

Maya couldn't help but notice her feet didn't touch the floorboards.

"All aboard, ladies!" Tina called. "Let's get this baby _flyin'!_"

Salvador and Maya strapped in, and Tina's hands continued to dance over the buzzard console as she prepped the engine. "Hey, Salvador!" she called to him. "You always yell things right before you blow stuff up. What's a good one for right before you go flying in an airborne death machine?"

"Ummm...oh! I know!" He leaned as close to Tina as he could and said something too quietly for Maya to hear.

Tina, however cackled madly. "Awesome!" She pulled back on the stick, and the engines whined to life. "_Screw you, Newton!_"

The buzzard began to lift off. It rolled enough to make Maya grip her shoulder straps uneasily, but Tina got them off the ground and into a climb. "Ok, sister, now what?"

"Just hold us steady!" Maya shouted over the rotors. She dug out Zero's scanner and booted it up. "Bearing three-one-five, elevation zero-two-six degrees!"

"_What?_"

"Left and up!" Maya kept her eyes on the scanner screen as Tina jerkily maneuvered them towards the patch of ionized air. "Ok, we're close enough! Just hold here for a minute!"

[Um, Maya?] Salvador yelled. With the buzzard between them, he had switched to his ECHO unit.

"Little busy!" She tapped a few controls, making sure the data was recording.

[Maya, I think you need to see this!]

"Not _now, _Sal!"

[Yes, _now_, Maya! Look_ down!_]

"Fine! I'll look, dammit!" Maya tore her eyes off the screen in exasperation, looked down... and felt a surge of horror.

The varkids had stopped fighting. In fact, there didn't even seem to be any of the mutant insects left.

What _was_ left was a transformation pod fifty feet across. And it was still growing.

Tina was staring at it as well. "Tell me you're done over there!"

Maya glanced at the screen. "I need another minute!"

There was the sound of Salvador cocking his guns. [I don't think we-]

The pod erupted, sending a wave of fluid across the ground. Something pushed its way out of the sac, shrieking in a way that somehow reminded Maya of metal shredding metal. For another second, Maya wasn't sure what she was seeing. It was all iridescent armor, legs thicker than bullymong arms, and mandibles that looked like they could rip Sanctuary in half. Then the armor on its back rustled, and massive transparent wings unfolded, stretching into the sky.

Humans had been destroyed by whatever had mutated everything in Tundra Express. Varkids had been _perfected._

"Oh, _sh-_"

The wings began to beat, picking up speed quickly. Their drone dominated all other sounds, eclipsing even the whine of the buzzard's engines. The varkid gave its warbling, high-pitched shriek, and began to take to the air.

Maya didn't even bother to hope the thing hadn't seen them. It was coming right for their buzzard. She pulled her SMG, but the weapon had never seemed so inadequate.

The thing was almost directly underneath the buzzard, giving both Vault Hunters the best shot they could hope for. They opened fire, raking the thing's carapace. Creature and bandits all over Pandora had fallen to their guns; this one didn't even seem to notice. It didn't look like their fire even scratched the strangely hypnotic colors in the armor.

Then, to Maya's infinite relief, she heard a chime from the scanner in her hand. "Scan's done! Get us out of here, Tina! Go, _now_!"

Tina gunned the buzzard's engines for all the were worth. The craft accelerated quickly, and in seconds, they were flying away from Tundra Express, heading over open ground. They had just enough speed to hold their distance from the flying battlefortress of an insect, but nothing else. Even worse, Maya somehow had the impression it wasn't really _trying_ to catch them.

Yet.

_All right... let's try this_. Maya clenched her fist and and concentrated. Light flashed in the creature's face, and the air rippled as a sphere of dark energy flashed against the creature's eye.

It didn't do any damage. It _did _seem to enrage the monster. The varkid gave another ear-splitting shriek, stretched its mandibles wide-

"_Tina, BANK RIGHT!_"

The varkid spewed a torrent of burning fluid at them, but Tina had reacted in time. The air heated up thirty degrees, but it had missed. That time.

[You wanna spit fire?!] Salvador bellowed. [Here's some fire from _me!_] Twin hails of bullets vomited from Salvador's side, splattering against the varkid's face.

The varkid's shrieked again, and sent another jet of liquid fire after them. Tina jerked the stick again, barely dodging the blast.

[Come on, _cucaracha!_] Salvador roared. [Come and get me!] Another salvo of bullets splatted against the creature's armored shell. [You think you're bad?! I've _eaten_ bigger bugs than you!]

Abruptly, the varkid slowed. The massive wings beat the air less furiously, and the buzzard started to gain some distance and altitude. In a few seconds, they were fifty feet above the varkid and maybe twice that far away.

Maya frowned. _Why would it do that? Is it giving up? _"Sal, are you seeing this? It's dropping back!"

[_Si_, because buggy back there doesn't want me to fry him with oil!]

"I sincerely doubt that!" She twisted around to the cockpit. "Give it all she's got, Tina! I don't like this one-"

The air exploded.

The shockwave rocked the buzzard, throwing Maya against her restraints. A second explosion battered their airspace, and Maya looked wildly for the source. "What the _hell?!_"

There was a swarm of black dots taking off from the varkid, approaching fast. Some were already around them: smaller insects, each roughly the size of a volleyball. They weren't agile, but they were fast... and their abdomen all glowed with a fiery orange light.

"Spitting napalm at us wasn't enough?!" Maya shouted in disbelief. She raked the sky with her gun, detonating a few of the new insects before they got any closer. "It just had to throw organic _grenades, _too!"

[At least these die!] Salvador yelled. A series of explosions erupted from his side of the buzzard. [I don't like that thing's armor! Where's a big, glowing weak point when you need it?!]

"Probably in the mouth, under _another_ armor plate!" Maya yelled back, still firing. "For that matter, where are _these _things coming from?!"

[Looks like they're flying out of holes in the underside of its body!]

"Great! We're fighting a varkid that thinks it's a rakk hive!"

[Hey, Maya!] Salvador's voice had taken on a strangely thoughtful quality. [How many 'grenades' do you think that thing carries?]

"How should I know?!" She blasted another four, and the explosion was close enough to rock the buzzard again. "In something _that_ size? Could be thousands!"

[Just what I needed to know! Tina, get us some more height!]

"You got it, shawty!"

The buzzard angled up, clawing for altitude. As the the harness straps cut into her shoulders, the varkid came into view directly below them. Maya started to get a bad feeling. "Sal, what are you-"

"_GEROOONIIIIIMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!_"

* * *

All of Salvador's life, he had thought the greatest rush was facing the hordes, mowing down any that opposed him. Now, as he plummeted through the air, free-falling towards an unholy insectoid monstrosity that spewed fire and explosives, he knew a bittersweet truth:

_This_ was life's greatest rush, and it would never come again. _Guess I'd better enjoy it!_

Salvador fired the whole way down, his miniguns detonating any of the smaller explosive insects unlucky enough to be in his path. He kept firing when the path was clear, watching his bullets splatter against the strip of the varkid's body between its head and massive wings. He clenched his teeth, watching his fire ricochet ineffectively off the varkid's armor. For what felt like eternity, the vast, rainbow-irridescent hide stretched out before him, his gunfire continuing to pound impotently on the implacable shell, until finally...

A crack.

Salvador flipped over a microsecond before he would've done the most epic faceplant in the history of Pandora. Instead, he stuck his landing, slamming into the varkid's carapace with his bootheel.

His impact widened the crack.

Salvador stabbed his guns up against the weakened area and fired, oblivious to anything else. He fired until the last round in the clip was spent, went to reload-

[_SAL!_]

Salvador's head whipped up, and he saw the varkid was closing on the buzzard, flame spewing towards the tiny craft, threatening to roast it and his friends-

"The _hell_ you say!" He pulled his shotguns, abandoning his empty rifles. Chips of armor flew around him, and then those guns were empty, too. Dual SMGs widened and deepened the hole before yielding the task to Salvador's pistols, then, finally, his rarely used sniper rifle collection.

With a final _click_, Salvador the Gunzerker was effectively out of ammunition for the first time in his entire life.

Too bad for the varkid.

The fury of ten thousand warriors howled into the Pandoran sky. The summit of all humanity plied his rage upon the varkid's scarred and cracked hide. The ocean of man's hatred crashed against the rocks of nature's indifference as evolution gave way to primal instinct. Countless generations of mankind had bred, fought, invented, persevered, clawed their way across the stars, lived and died... all so Salvador could punch a bug.

Mankind won.

Sal's final blow shattered the last inch of shell left by his bullets. Gasping, Salvador seized a grenade that had patiently waited its turn for this, the pinnacle of its existence. With bloody hands, he pulled the pin and shoved the device into the quivering mass of jellied insect flesh.

Then he ran like hell.

* * *

From her seat in buzzard, Maya saw Salvador sprint for the edge of the varkid. "_Tina! Full speed!_"

* * *

Salvador leapt into the air again, folding in his arms and willing himself to drop faster. A very small part of his mind realized he was falling towards hard ground further and faster than he ever had before, but most of it was saying _five..._ _four...three...two..._

The explosion was Salvador's proudest creation ever. The grenade detonated the varkid's internal stores of napalm, and then chain reacted into its unlaunched living grenades. The nearly invulnerable armor now worked against itself, trapping the explosions, rebounding the shockwaves, until it could contain no more, and the massive creature shredded itself in an orgy of detonation.

The varkid didn't even have time to shriek as it died; it simply started to fall, then blew itself apart in the biggest, loudest, and _juiciest_ explosion ever.

Salvador crashed to the ground, making a crater three feet deep and nine wide. He staggered out and spat out a tooth on the ground, but he was alive. Salvador stared skyward, watching his masterpiece of destruction rain down around him, burning exoskeleton and varkid guts. In the distance, Maya and Tina's cheers echoed down from the buzzard. Salvador stabbed both fists into the air in exultation, bellowing his triumph in testament to everything he would ever be:

"_I AM ALL THAT IS MAN!_"

* * *

[I think that's the most poetic I can get about a man completely losing his sh*t.]  


[I learn about new things all the time on FFN. For instance, I had no idea there were countries named Estonia and Brunei Darussalam.]

[Next week, it's discussion time in Sanctuary! Riveting! Thanks for reading, and hope to see you there!]  



	12. The correct answer is barbecued

Lilith sighed and rubbed her eyes. "The way we use the fast travel system, it's easy to forget that a planet is a _big_ place to hide something, even a starship."

"No kidding," Mordecai agreed. He looked across the holo-table at Zero. "You're sure you can't think up _anything_ that might help us narrow the search before anyone else gets back? I'd hate to say we just wasted our time starin' at these maps while they were out getting' stuff done."

Zero shook his head. "I never was my Brother's keeper, nor his friend. I don't know his mind."

"Too bad," Lilith grunted, straightening up and cracking her back. "Sibling insight would've been nice. What about defenses? When we do find this ship of his, any guess what he might throw at us?"

Zero shrugged. "Big guns."

"Starship caliber weapons," Mordecai said wearily. "_Those_ are gonna be fun to take on." He checked his watch and sighed. "I'm gonna take a break and let Talon stretch his wings. He's been cooped up for hours."

"Sounds good," Lilith said. "We'll keep at it."

Mordecai nodded and headed out. Lilith and Zero both watched him go, waiting until he was down the stairs.

The instant his footsteps had faded, Lilith shut down her ECHO device. "Ok, now that there's no chance of anyone calling us at an awkward moment, we need to talk," she said quickly.

"We need to discuss How to move forward with this," Zero agreed, flipping the switch on his own ECHO. "Have any ideas?"

"Not a one." She folded her arms and paced around the holo-table, tense and uneasy. "I never expected _you_, of all people, to drop that particular bombshell on me."

Zero remained leaning against the wall, but his voice was as tense as Lilith's pacing. "The path is unclear From my perspective as well. Bring in the others?"

"Are you crazy?" Lilith snapped. "_We _don't even know how to handle this, and you want to bring in the _others?_"

Zero merely stared at her, his faceplate blank.

She stopped pacing and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Sorry. You didn't deserve that. All you did was tell me the truth."

"No need for sorry. Situation not your fault." He paused, then flashed :] onto his display. "Well, just a _little_."

"Fair enough," Lilith said dryly. "Anyway, no, I don't think we need to let the others in on our little secret yet. Not until we've resolved this whole thing with your brother."

"'Resolving' it will Mean a hard fight to the death," Zero cautioned. He hesitated for a second, then said, "You know what he'd want."

Lilith glared at him. "Uh-uh. You do _not_ get to play that card. Maybe Roland wouldn't want me there, but he wouldn't want us to leave Gaige with your murderous brother, either." She leaned close and jabbed her finger into his chest. "And all _three_ of us would know that whatever happens, the group's chances are better with me there at the end, even if my powers _are _a little flukey right now."

Zero glanced at the offending digit, then at Lilith's face with a :) "Fiery spirit. Roland chose his girlfriends well. You _should_ be with us."

"Glad we agree," Lilith said, leaning back. "I have to admit, though, facing your brother scares me less than _this_." She wiped an eye and smiled sadly at Zero. "Aren't feelings crazy?"

"On this world, that's fine," Zero replied. "Pandora's not _for_ the sane. Wouldn't you concur?"

"Truer words were never spoken," Lilith admitted, smiling faintly. "Okay. Matter discussed, matter on hold. Let's figure out what to do with your brother." She boosted herself up and sat on the edge of the holo-table. "Tell me about him."

"There's little to tell, And most of it useless now," Zero said hesitantly. "Any suggestions?"

"Tell me about when you were kids," Lilith suggested. "Tell me about growing up together. Who's older, you or him?"

"I am the older," Zero said, sitting uneasily, "And I didn't see him much. He barely knew me."

"So why does he want to kill you?" she asked. "What makes him blame you for your father's death?"

He shrugged. "Father wanted me To follow a certain path. I chose something else." Zero laced his fingers together and rested his chin on them. "A few years later, Father died from 'broken heart." He scoffed. "So my brother says."

Lilith was silent for a minute. "Your brother really loved your father, huh?"

"He was the good son, The one who followed orders. Father was his life." Zero shook his head. "Not enough for me. Father's dream, insufficient. Needed a _challenge_."

"And after he died, your brother thought the only thing that would make the world right was to _kill_ you?" she asked incredulously.

"Father never was Exactly what you call _sane_," Zero admitted. "Must have passed that on."

"Well, his oldest became an assassin on Pandora," Lilith grinned. "By your logic, he passed on crazy to _you_, at least."

:) "True."

"I dunno, man," Lilith went on. "I'm all for revenge, but I usually like it when there's something more concrete to base it on. He says your dad died of broken heart, just because you didn't take the job he wanted? Sounds pretty lame to me." A stray thought occurred. "What did your dad want you to be, anyway?"

Zero shifted in his seat, looking more uncomfortable than Lilith had ever seen. "Um..."

"Come on, tell me! What's the problem?" She leaned forward. "Did he pressure you into being a gynecologist or something?"

Zero didn't move a muscle.

Lilith's mouth dropped in gleeful amazement. "Oh, my god!" she cackled. "That's it, isn't it?!"

Zero put a hand to his faceplate and shook his head. "Gynecology, As well as Urology, All in one doctor."

She couldn't help it. Lilith burst out laughing, harder than she had in years. It was a few minutes before she could get herself under control.

"Not _that _funny," Zero grumbled.

"I'm sorry," she finally gasped, wiping tears from her eyes. "I really am. It's just..." she struggled to keep her voice steady, "the idea... of you, wearing that armor while examining-"

Zero sighed as Lilith collapsed to her knees, laughing like a madwoman. "Oh, cruel destiny, Why do you torment me so? Why must I suffer?"

Lilith started to get herself back under control, although she kept snickering a little. "So, what happened? How do you go from-" she choked back another snort, "your father's lofty ambitions to killing people for money?"

"I-"

"No, wait," she interrupted, holding up a hand and hiccuping with laughter, "I don't _wanna_ know. It'll just detract from this." To Zero's surprise, she suddenly draped herself playfully across his lap, throwing her left arm around his neck. "So, doctor, will you be opening a clinic next to Zed's? Running annual check-ups for all Sanctuary's residents?" Her grin widened a little more. "Should I make mine now, before you're all booked up?"

Zero sighed morosely. "And everybody Wonders why I keep my past A deep, dark secret."

"Lilith? _Zero?_ What's goin' _on_ up here?" Mordecai was standing in the door, staring at them in disbelief. Even Talon, riding his shoulder, seemed puzzled.

Lilith waved at him, but otherwise stayed put. "Hey, Mordy. 'Sup?"

"Uh..." Mordecai stammered, clearly having trouble catching his balance. "Just wanted to let you know, Axton and Krieg just ECHOed in. They got what we were after."

Lilith sat up straight, oblivious to both her teammates' growing discomfort. "The signal ping? It worked?"

Mordecai nodded. "They couldn't tell anything from there, but they're on their way back now. Once they plug the data into our map system..."

"We'll be that much closer to an answer," Lilith finished with satisfaction. "What about Maya and Salvador?"

Mordecai shook his head. "Nothin' yet. Of course, if your ECHOs were on, you'd know that already." He looked at them suspiciously. "Why'd you shut 'em off, anyway? Especially _now,_ of all times?" He crossed his arms and looked at her a little accusingly. "Or do I really need to ask?"

"Uh..." Lilith looked at Zero awkwardly, suddenly aware of how she was sitting.

Zero looked back, blank-faced for a second. Then an exclamation point flared to life, and he bolted to his feet.

Lilith, caught off guard, tumbled to the floor. "Ouch! Zero, what-"

"Shut off your ECHO!"

Mordecai looked at him like he was crazy. "What?"

"_He can listen to our Communications!_"

Horror dawned on both their faces at the same time. "What did Axton say?" Lilith asked quickly. "_Exact _words."

"Uh..." Mordecai thought back. "They completed the mission, had some trouble with Surveyors, and got what they were after. Then he said they'd plug the data in when they got back and we'd go from there."

Lilith breathed out a sigh of relief. "We were lucky he was that vague. But if Maya calls in and says too much..."

"He could move the ship, And we're right back to square one," Zero said grimly. "We have to warn them."

"I'll try to get 'em," Mordecai said, heading out to the balcony. "I'll see if I can tell 'em not to say anything without tippin' anyone listenin' off, either."

Lilith got up and brushed herself off, looking uneasily at her communicator. "With all the times we've been contacted by random people over the ECHOnet, I didn't even think that someone might be actively using it against us for once." She looked at Zero. "What made you think of it?"

"He's using all my Tricks from my assassin days," Zero said grimly. "It's what I would do."

She folded her arms and looked at him in exasperation. "So you can guess everything except where he might hide his ship, huh?"

:( "Yes."

Lilith shook her head. "Figures."

"We could have a problem," Mordecai said, walking back in. "I can't reach the others. I don't know if they're just not getting my calls or just can't answer now, but they ain't picking up either way."

"Just keep trying," Maya ordered. "You hear a _peep_ out of it, you do whatever it takes to make sure they don't let on what we're doing."

Mordecai nodded. "Right." He started to turn away, then stopped. "But that still doesn't explain why your ECHOs were _already_ off." He folded his arms and looked closely at both of them. "Or your choice of... seat cushion."

"Zero told me something funny and I got flirty," Lilith said lightly, waving a hand. "Don't read anything into it."

Mordecai glanced over at Zero, who merely stared silently, then back at Lilith. "Uh-huh. Look, it's none of _my_ business if you wanna hook up with someone new-"

"Can we _not_ discuss this right now?" Lilith asked, in a tone that clearly said _shut up this second or I will phaseblast you into oblivion._

"Sure, Lil." Mordecai tossed up his hands. "Whatever you say."

Lilith gave a sharp sigh and rubbed her forehead. "Any idea how much longer before Krieg and Axton get back?"

"Shouldn't be long," Mordecai said. "It sounds like they cleared out the trouble in Opportunity, so the trip home should be pretty quick."

"Then I guess the only x-factor will be how long it takes Maya and Salvador to get their scan," Lilith said. "That's something that-"

"_Heeeeey, Liiiilyyyyy!_"

The voice drifted in through the window on a breeze. All three looked out off the balcony, into the sky.

"What the _hell?_"

There was a buzzard hovering over Sanctuary.

* * *

Axton materialized in Sanctuary's transit station and sighed with relief. "Finally." He turned and stepped aside as Krieg's form finished resolving itself. "Okay, Trappy, we're done." He hesitated, the added, somewhat reluctantly, "Thanks for the help."

"No problem, Minion 1!" Claptrap replied happily as Krieg unstrapped him. "But maybe next time we take the elevators _up_, too."

"You'll have to take that up with the elevator operator over there," Axton said dryly. "And if there _is _a next time, don't look off the edge of the building just because the shooting stopped." He rubbed his leg. "Those little pinchers of yours are gonna leave bruises from you clinging to my leg in terror, I'm sure of it."

Claptrap slumped despondently. "Sure thing, Minion 1," he said, his tone deflated. "I'll just be rolling around if you need me."

Axton decided to give the little guy a break. "Hey. Poker this Thursday?"

Claptrap brightened instantly. "You betcha! I'll have the deck shuffled and the snacks ready!" He rolled off, in much better spirits and dub stepping to himself.

Axton noticed Krieg looking at him. "What?" he demanded, a little defensively. "He helped us out. The least I can do is play cards with him." He sighed and headed out of the building. "Besides, maybe I'll die in the rescue attempt and this'll all be moot anyway."

Krieg let out a gravelly sort of chuckle. "Talking about the deer, huh?"

"And we're back to me not getting a word you say," Axton sighed. "Come on, let's-" He broke off. There was a sound echoing down from the headquarters open balcony, one that seemed wildly out of place right now.

Laughter.

A few seconds and a flight of stairs later, Axton was looking into the meeting room in disbelief. Everyone else was there, lounging around. Salvador was standing by the holo-table covered in foul-smelling, horrible looking goo. Meanwhile, Tiny Tina, of all people, was standing on the center table and going on in enthusiastic detail about something.

"-and _then_, Sally just gets up and screams he's the king of the world or something, I couldn't really hear him over the engines." She grinned psychotically. "It... was... _awesome_."

"My one regret is that there wasn't enough of Varmothra left to grill." Salvador sighed dramatically. "_That_ would've been a feast worth eating!"

"Probably just as well," Maya said. She was grinning like an idiot, too. "I can still smell whatever that flammable substance was on your clothes, Sal. If you lit a match right now, you'd be grilling _yourself_." She made a face. "Besides, who grills varkids? Deep-frying is the way to go. A really good breading even adds to the crunch."

"I like 'em flambeed," Mordecai argued. "Dice 'em up, throw 'em in a pan, pour skag brandy on it, then light the whole mess on fire." He kissed his fingertips and gestured to the air. "_Delicioso. _One of the few things I actually enjoy eating."

"And of course it involves alcohol on everything," Lilith teased.

"Well, I don't really enjoy eating bugs," Axton interrupted brightly, drawing everyone's attention. "Too crunchy for my taste, not enough meat." He took a few steps into the room, hands wrapped tightly around his belt. "I bet Gaige doesn't like 'em either. She doesn't really seem the type to eat bugs. Remember Gaige? The friend that got kidnapped last night?"

Maya gave him an uneasy look. "Axton-"

"I bet Brick likes them, though," he interrupted quickly, voice growing more brittle with every word. "I bet he _loved_ chowing down on varkids. Remember Brick? The guy who got skewered last night?" He gave a sarcastic laugh. "I bet _he's _not feeling like eating right now, not with a gut wound like that." Axton glared around the room, dropping the happy facade, voice raising with every word. "Does _anyone _here remember that we're supposed to be going after the bastard that did this?!"

"Ax-"

He slammed his ECHO unit down on the holotable. "There's the data from Opportunity. I'll be at the fast travel station when you've got a location. Assuming you're all done swapping _recipes._" He stormed out of the room.

_Varkid grilling,_ Axton fumed, stomping down the stairs. _What's next? Taking some time for go-carting? _His rage swelled, and he kicked the front door open.

Zero was standing in the alley, arms crossed and staring impassively at him

Axton blinked. "What the... how did you get past me?"

Zero pointed up. "The balcony is Merely one floor above ground," he said calmly. "No challenge at all."

"Whatever." Axton stormed forward and tried to shove past, but Zero sidestepped back in front of him. Axton glared at him, a red haze at the edge of his vision. "Get out of my way, Zero."

Zero re-folded his arms and kept blocking him.

"Go on, get lost!" Axton yelled, still trying to maneuver around him. "Go back up and laugh with everyone else! Waste time while one of our friends is in the hands of a known enemy!"

"I wasn't laughing. Your data has been input, We'll have results soon."

"Oh, then that makes _everything _better!" he shouted, finally shoving his way past Zero. "It makes up for the lost time, the directionless floundering, the whole damn _thing!_" Axton kicked one of the stray boxes that littered Sanctuary in fury.

Zero said nothing and continued to watch him.

"And what about you, huh?!" Axton suddenly demanded, whirling around. "What have _you_ done this whole damn time?! You knew, didn't you?! Right from the start, from _Aegrus, _you knew and you didn't say _anything!_"

_Crack_.

Axton's fist had moved before he even realized what he was doing. In a split second, his knuckles were aching and Zero's head had twisted with the force of his punch.

Zero turned back and rubbed at his jawline. "Finished?" he asked mildly.

Axton's rage flamed out, leaving the ashes of regret. "Sorry." He turned away and thumped his head against the alley wall. "I couldn't stop him, Z," he finally said. "He'd critically wounded one of our friends, was in the middle of kidnapping another, I find out he's got a deathmark on you, and I _couldn't stop him_." He turned and slumped to the ground, letting the back of his head crack against the wall this time. "I've been trying to ignore that this whole time, but when I saw all you guys just hanging out, _laughing_ like nothing was wrong..."

"_I_ left him alive."

Axton broke off. "What?"

"Our fight, so long ago? I knew he survived." Zero sighed and sat next to Axton. "How could I kill him, The only brother I had?" He shook his head. "I was weak back then."

Axton couldn't find anything to say.

"We're paying a steep cost For my mercy at the time," Zero continued. "This isn't on you."

"Ain't the same," Axton said bluntly. "You made a mistake, I just plain blew it." He sighed and thumped his head on the wall again. "How many guys have I cut down over the years? And then, when one of my friends' lives is on the line, I'm too slow to make a shot and save her."

"So we make it right By taking back our friend," Zero said. "And this time, he _dies_."

"On that, we agree," Axton grunted.

"Ax! Zero! Get up here!" They looked up in the direction of the shout. Maya was waving at them from the balcony. "_We got it!_"

* * *

Mordecai frowned at the map. "Of all the places on Pandora, why'd he go there?"

"It actually makes good tactical sense," Maya pointed out. "There's energy signatures to hide his own power output, it's low traffic, and from our own experience, it's safe to assume he can turn it against us pretty easily."

"You mean if we accept Krieg's word he can hack Hyperion digistruct pillars," Lilith said.

"It adds up," Maya said. "The first thing that happened at the _Terminus_ was the WAR loaders manifesting. There was no _way_ Gaige did that, not just by firing up the light bridge. Then, Krieg and Axton get attacked by Surveyors in Opportunity, a dead city with no one controlling it?" She shook her head. "No way that's a coincidence, not if Zero's right and his brother _can_ tap the ECHO net."

"Does that mean he did the bugs, too?" Salvador asked. "If he heard us talk about the mission, he knew we were going to Tundra Express."

Maya looked over at Zero. "Well? Did you ever work up anything that could mutate organisms like that? Is he using another one of your tricks?"

"I never worked on Biomanipulation," Zero said. "That one is all his."

"We know he accessed Hyperion's abandoned stuff," Lilith said. "Maybe that included their slag research."

"Even if he did, that one won't help up there," Axton grunted. "Not much life in those mountains. But if we assume he can hack Dahl's digistruct pillars the same way he can do Hyperion's, he won't _need_ to mutate anything."

"Look, why are we still talking?" Salvador asked, grinning. He held up his guns. "Is there any chance we're wrong?"

Maya and Lilith glanced at each other. Lilith shook her head. "No. There's no chance."

"Then we are agreed, We have his location now," Zero said. "It's time to move out."

It was undeniable. Maya's scan of the ion trail had allowed Sanctuary's sensors to search for precisely the correct energy signature. That had illuminated half a dozen points on the map that might have been a landing site. Axton's turrets had gotten a directional ping from one of them.

Maya shook her head and stared at the map. "Digistruct Peak. Never thought we'd have to storm our own training ground."

"He's gonna start throwin' every construct in the database at us the second we show up," Mordecai warned.

"Hey, it's still _our_ facility," Lilith pointed out. "Almost everyone that worked on it lives in this town. If anyone can find a way to neutralize his advantage, it's us."

"Then we'd better get started," Axton said firmly.

* * *

['Our' is an annoying/versatile word. It can be one or two syllables depending on how you say it.]

[Next week, the Vault Hunters resolve all their problems peacefully and everybody leaves happy. That'll be a satisfying conclusion to this, right?]

[Thanks for reading!]


	13. Misfire

Time had ceased to matter for Gaige. All her reality lay in the creation of the mechanical body in front of her.

The work had gone infinitely faster since One had intercepted the ECHO call. Part of the reason was the odd combination of added pressure and peace of mind it had given her. It meant her friends hadn't given up and were on their way. Perversely, however, Gaige wanted to finish the android before they tried to rescue her. _Brain, you are a weird thing._

The schematics had also been a huge help. Once Gaige had finished studying them, she knew the outline its designer had intended. By getting into the mindset of the original builder, Gaige had been able to make intuitive shortcuts that might otherwise have taken her years to figure out, assuming she ever did.

But mostly, it was the sense of security afforded by the completion of her own arm's repairs.

It hadn't taken long once she was left alone. The patch job was admittedly a little rough, but Gaige felt certain it was enough to level the playing field.

Deathtrap was ready. It was just a matter of waiting for the right moment to unleash him.

One hadn't given her that opportunity just yet. Since returning from the wherever he'd gone after the ECHO call, the assassin had resumed standing in the corner, hand on his sword, just watching Gaige work. He hadn't said anything, and she hadn't talked to him, either. They both just wanted her to finish the android.

And then, before she even realized it, she was done.

Gaige blinked and stepped back, wiping the sweat out of her eyes as the rush of creation left. "I... I think I'm finished."

One stepped forward eagerly. "Oh?"

"The pathways are all intact," Gaige said, reviewing her work. "The neural net looks solid... motor circuitry and actuators are all in place... lemme just run a test signal through the body..." She tapped a few keys on the display built into the table, her excitement building. "Ummmm... yep. The diagnostic shows solid communication all the way from the neural input socket to the furthest extremity." She looked at One, excitement running wild in her eyes. "It's really, truly _done._ All we need now is the programming to bring it to life."

"Then my task is finally here," One said, stepping forward. "The birth of my brother is near." He motioned to the wall. "Now, don't offer guff And put on your cuff Or else I must kill you, I fear."

Gaige glared at him as her excitement faded. "That's it, huh? No 'thanks for the hard work, sorry for kidnapping you', just 'shut up and chain yourself again'?"

One's sword flared into existence, pointed straight at her. "I regret to act with askance, But with this I shall take no chance. You will do as I say Without any delay Else my sword, through your heart it will lance."

She didn't have any choice. "After all this, still threatening me," Gaige snarled, walking to the dangling cuffs. "That's as much my creation now as it was your father's. You wouldn't even have gotten this far if you hadn't kidnapped me, and you know it!"

One walked up and snapped the heavy manacles closed around Gaige's wrists. "Your assistance was greatly needed, But your job you have now completed." He paused and looked at her.

Gaige had the strange sense he was deciding something. "What? What are you looking at?"

"The decision seems ill To commit to a kill," One said quietly, as if to himself. "The family must not be impeded."

"Hey!" Gaige yelled, yanking at the chain slightly. "What are you talking about?!"

One glanced at her again, then walked over to a storage compartment across the room. "Concern yourself not with my musing, For you'd find it only confusing. Just hope that your labors Find themselves in my favor," he pulled something out the cabinet and turned towards the android. "As this creation with life I'm infusing."

Gaige got a look at the odd, crown-like device in hands, and suddenly both her restraints and One's plans made a lot more sense. "Holy- how did you _get _one of those? They're _beyond_ illegal! Not to mention incredibly complex!"

To her surprise, One actually winked at her. Well, a ;) at least. "I thought you'd have realized by now That my father would never allow Himself to be steered By other men's fears, That to their laws he never would bow." One plugged a cable running out of the device into the head of the android, then slipped the crown around his own head. A ring of lights around its edge lit up, then began to pulse in a steady sequence.

It was her chance, Gaige knew it. The device One was using had the side effect of immobilizing whoever was wearing it while it was running. If she was ever going to make a move, this was the time. All she had to do was clench her fist, and Deathtrap would be able to make a killing shot.

And yet, she couldn't. She _had_ to see if this would work, if her skills had been up to the task.

The lights began to pulse faster, racing around the crown. A low hum began to fill the room, and Gaige caught a glimpse of the diagnostic table screen. There was definitely a data transfer in progress.

But there was no sign of movement from the android on the table.

The lights began slow, and finally stopped. One lifted the device from his head, and checked the display.

Gaige had a sinking feeling she already knew what he was going to find. "There's no neural activity, is there?"

One stared at the screen for a few more seconds, then began typing furiously. "No-!"

"Let me look," Gaige pleaded. "Maybe there's a problem with the headset, or something in the transfer unit-"

One whirled to face her, the blade in his hand flashing into existence with more menace than it ever had before. "Perhaps you need greater incentive, A way to be more inventive." He stalked towards her. "Should I cut off a leg_-"_

_ "_Oh, _shut UP!_" Bracing herself, Gaige seized the chain with her metal hand and yanked with all the strength her cybernetic limb possessed.

The sharp cuff sliced into her right wrist, but the power of her left arm was enough to snap the chain like it was string. That left her hands bound, but bound in front of her... and with a very heavy piece of metal attached.

The action seemed to stun One. He froze, staring at his now freed prisoner. Gaige took advantage and slammed the makeshift weapon into his helmet. The impact sent a loud _crack_ echoing into the room, and a fracture spiderwebbed across his faceplate.

Gaige didn't bother with a second swing. She dove for the airlock... just as she clenched her fist. "_Eat metal death!_"

There was a brilliant flash, and Deathtrap flared into existence. With a mechanical growl, his claws lashed out at One.

One was staggered, but still fast enough to get his blade up. He caught Deathtrap's scythe-like hand on his sword, blocking an instant killing stroke, and kicked at the larger robot's body. Deathtrap recoiled slightly at the impact, then went into a spinning flurry, claws flashing against sword.

One's blade was a dizzying blur of light, barely keeping Deathtrap's lethal talons at bay. As Deathtrap's attack spun down, One found an opening and slashed viciously. Deathtrap fell back again, a diagonal cut across his chest sparking, but immediately retaliated with his heat laser.

Gaige didn't know how he was fast enough, but One managed to catch the beam on his sword, blocking the attack. She tensed her muscles, preparing to charge into the fray-

-and was thrown off her feet as the floor gave a violent jolt.

Whatever hit them was strong enough to make the whole ship rock. It was also enough to make One lose his footing and drop his guard for a split second.

Deathtrap, however, was levitating. The impact that staggered One had no effect on him, and it gave him the opening he needed. The robot reared back and slammed his hands together, letting loose a massive shockwave. The assassin was hurled off his feet, through the air-

-and right out the airlock Gaige had opened during their battle.

Gaige looked at the blue Pandoran sky and let out a shaky sigh of relief. _Good thing we weren't in space. _She grinned at Deathtrap. "Nice one, boy." She held up her wrists. "Cut these off, will ya?"

Deathtrap gave a quick, almost delicate slash, and her hands were free. Rubbing gingerly at the new cuts on her right wrist, Gaige stepped into the airlock chamber and looked out the door.

It was just as well she hadn't tried to escape earlier. They weren't in space, but they weren't low to the ground, either. They seemed to be parked on a mesa, at least a hundred and fifty feet straight up. The ground directly below was empty, but Gaige could see structures not far off, with an energy field ringing the area-

She blinked in surprise. "_Digistruct Peak_?"

"_Heeeeeey, Shawty!_"

Gaige look up, and a smile broke across her face. _And the surprises keep coming. _

Tiny Tina was flying in a buzzard, hovering about fifty yards away, with a pair of smoking missile pods on either side of the aircraft. Apparently, she'd been the one that fired and rocked the ship.

"Tina!" she yelled, waving. "Tina, what are you _doing_ here?!"

"Girl, don't you even know a rescue when you see one?!" Tina yelled back. "The others are down there! We're gonna storm the ship an' _KILL_ this sucka! Hang on, I'm gonna come in an' grab ya!"

"It's okay!" Gaige yelled. "I already_-_" she broke off. She looked straight down at the desert floor again with belated awareness. _Where's the body?!_

"Tina!" she yelled, a horrible premonition seizing her. "Tina, _GET BACK!_"

She was a split second too late. Tina's buzzard was less than twenty feet away, and suddenly a vague, semi-transparent figure leapt from the right below the airlock door and landed on the buzzard's cockpit roof, a blue blade glowing ominously in its hand.

Tina shrieked.

"_Deathtrap!_"

There was a rush of air as Deathtrap raced past Gaige, and then the robot was at the buzzard. He reached the cockpit just as One's cloak dropped and the vicious sword arced towards Tina-

The blade cut deep into Deathtrap's back, but it didn't touch the girl. Deathtrap's claws ripped through her seat harness and they fell away from the buzzard, Tina wrapped protectively in Deathtrap's massive arms. One slid into the buzzard's pilot seat, grabbed the stick and wheeled around, bringing the buzzard's missile pods to bear-

-and the port engine exploded.

Deathtrap had managed one final parting shot: an electrical burst right into the buzzard's left wing. The buzzard spiraled away, smoking and sparking.

Gaige watched long enough to make sure Deathtrap got Tina safely to the ground. The robot landed near the entrance to the Peak, dissolving in a blaze of light. Gaige caught a glimpse of a second flash of light, this one from the Fast Travel station. Tina, at least, was safe.

Just as well. Gaige had no illusions about One dying with the buzzard. He was too skillful for that.

_I have to get down there,_ she agonized. _But _how_?_

It was too far to climb. She certainly wasn't going to try jumping to the ground without a shield, and because the repairs weren't exactly perfect, Deathtrap's recharge time was going to be at least five minutes, probably closer to ten. "Maybe I can fly this thing," Gaige mused. She turned and started for the door into the rest of the ship. "If the controls aren't too-"

_Clunk._

Gaige looked down. Her foot had tapped the headset, laying on the floor where One had dropped it in frustration. As Gaige stared at that marvelous, incredible, illegal piece of technology, a strange set of facts aligned themselves into one overwhelming certainty.

"It would never work for him," she whispered. "It _couldn't._ But... does that mean..."

She acted without even thinking. One second the device was on the floor, the next it was in her hands.

And then it was on her head.

Gaige's last thought before the process began was _Oh _crap_ what am I _doing _I have to help my fr-_

She gasped, every muscle in her body seizing up as a random jumble of images and emotions flashed through her mind. Jack was taunting them over Roland's body, Jack was laying dead on the ground. Marcy Holloway was exploding under Deathtrap's claws, Deathtrap was nothing more than a few lines on a page and a goal. Gaige, excited, afraid, and alone on a starship descending towards Pandora... Gaige, exhilarated and standing by her friends in the cargo hold of a destroyed ship. A burst of light blinded her mind's eye, and then...

Darkness.

* * *

[Thanks for reading, and see you next- wait, thirteen chapters? Nope. Have another one.]


	14. Everybody was kaiju fighting

One wrestled with the buzzard control stick, aiming the unstable craft towards the training ground below. As long as he got close enough, he could jump out and land safely, he just had to coax the craft over the forcefield wall...

[_Light him _up_, Hunters!_]

One looked up sharply at the sound of the intercepted ECHO transmission. His lifeform sensors registered at least half a dozen biosigns near the main entrance to the facility, each with-

He used the space of a heartbeat to enter a short command sequence on his wrist controls, then leapt off the buzzard, a half second before the Vault Hunter's rockets blasted it into fiery oblivion.

As he fell, One deactivated his human style speech processor and activated a high frequency transmitter in his helmet. Only one other person would be able to communicate with him this way. Come, brother. Now we end this.

* * *

Zero cast aside his rocket launcher and scanned the wreckage. His helmet illuminated a figure falling to the ground and projected its landing point. Zero drew his sword and sprinted towards it. Yes. We do.

* * *

"He's down, Tannis!" Axton yelled into his ECHO. "Zero's moving to take him out now! How's it going in there?"

[I have secured the system. He shouldn't be able to use the mountain against us now.]

"Glad to hear it." He looked at Lilith. "How about it, Lil?"

Lilith had been staring intently at the sleek, black ship parked on a mesa top. Now she broke her gaze away from it and shook her head. "It's no good. Tina didn't do enough damage to the shields; I can't teleport through them."

"So we're one for two," Mordecai said grimly. "At least we won't have to deal with-"

"_Heads up!_" Salvador shouted, scooping up and gesturing with Zero's abandoned launcher. "We've got incoming!" All over Digistruct Peak, the small pods that manifested enemies were flaring to life.

Mordecai sighed and drew his gun. "Never mind."

Axton cursed and pulled his rifle. "What's going on in there?! It looks like he just activated the whole freakin' mountain!"

[It seems he anticipated my primary shutdown routines, but not to worry,] Tannis' prim voice replied. [I am attempting to circumvent his controls and deactivate the projectors. In the meantime, I have already taken steps to mitigate the ever so _rude_ seizing of my facility. All the doors are sealed, and the energy fields are at full strength.]

The slow, steady drone of Digistruct Peak's energy field began to die, accompanied by a cacophony of loud, resounding _clank_s as the doors simultaneously unlocked.

[Oh dear.]

"Load 'em up, Hunters!" Axton roared. "God only knows what he's gonna-"

"Axton, wait." Maya grabbed his arm. "Something's wrong. Look at the pods."

Axton squinted down across the training ground, looking for the source of her worry. "What? Nothing's even spawned yet."

"Exactly," she pointed out. "By now there should be at least a dozen enemies on the field."

"So why aren't there," Axton finished, keying his ECHO. "Are you guys seeing anything weird in there?"

[You'd better believe it, sugar,] Moxxi's voice came back. [He's up to something out there. Even with all the pods running at once, the system is pulling more power than it should.]

"Then what is going _on?_" Maya stared out at the pods. "What could he possibly..." Her voice trailed off as a shadow fell across the mountain.

With a sort of reluctant dread, the Vault Hunters looked straight up... and found a rakk with a wingspan the size of Sanctuary resolving into existence.

"Oh, you have to _got _to be f-"

The rakk crashed its wings against the air, creating a downdraft powerful enough to stagger all the Hunters. The creature rocketed skyward, its wails echoing in the canyon around them.

[Oh my. It looks like he accessed my level nine projects. How interesting.]

"Dammit, Tannis!" Axton tracked the soaring creature and fired his assault rifle, but the rakk simply ignored the bullets. "When we get out of this, I am personally dismantling this whole freakin' place!"

"Keep cool, _hermano!_ We got this!" Salvador unleashed a barrage of rockets at the circling rakk. The missiles tracked, exploded against its hide... and left the rakk undamaged.

It was, however, _pissed_.

Salvador dove for cover as the rakk swooped overhead, the wind from its passage ripping at his clothes. It pulled a sharp turn, ignoring everything else and coming right back at Salvador. A cavernous maw began to open-

Maya's eyes widened. "_COVER YOUR EARS!_"

A sonic wave blasted out, shattering rock and blowing a crater a foot deep into the ground. The rakk flapped its wings and soared past, circling menacingly.

Maya crawled over to where Salvador lay, facedown and unmoving. She rolled him over and pulled open an eye. "Sal! Sal, you okay?!"

Salvador's eye tracked blearily. "Anybody get the number of that moon?"

"Hang on." Maya's tattoos flared, and she started healing Salvador's wounds. "I can get him back up in a minute."

"Won't do us any good if we can't kill that thing," Axton growled. "Tannis! Moxxi! Can you shut down the system, de-digistruct that thing?!"

[We're trying!] Moxxi said tensely. [When he hacked the system, he changed all the access codes at the same time! We have to go through all the system backdoors and reset everything the slow way!]

"What about cutting the power?!" Mordecai yelled. "Can't we just pull the plug?"

[He locked us out of the power systems, too! _Everything_ needs to be reset!]

Axton ducked as the rakk swooped by again, but at least it didn't shoot another sonic blast at them. "How long will that take?!"

[An hour if we're _lucky_!]

A blast from the rakk sent shattered a building and sent debris flying across the training ground. "Work faster!" Axton signed off.

"We can't wait for them, we'll get _shredded!_"Lilith shouted over the gale force winds. "We've gotta take that thing _out!_"

Mordecai fired a salvo of sniper shots that bounced harmlessly off the rakk's hide. "If you've got any ideas, Lil, I'm sure we'd all _love_ to hear 'em!"

"I might have a really bad one!" She grabbed Maya by the shoulder. "Do you think you can take control of that thing?"

Maya stared at her. "Can I Thoughtlock a digistruct creature with a brain the size of a train car?!" She looked at the circling rakk, then back at Salvador. "Not from down here, and not while I'm patching him up."

"What about from _on_ the rakk?" Lilith demanded. "Could you take control if you were in physical contact?"

"How would _I _know?!" Maya exploded. "I've never _tried_ to take something that size! Besides, how am I supposed to..." She trailed off and looked at Lilith, taking particular note of the other Siren's now glowing tattoos. "Oh. Right. Teleporter. But Sal's still-"

"Go, _chica_."

Maya looked down to see Salvador struggling to sit up. "Sal, wait-!"

"You wait any longer, we're all dead!" he growled, grabbing his launchers again. "Go and try this! It could be our only shot!" He grinned. "Trust me, riding around on the back of a giant critter you're about to kill is _awesome_."

Maya stared at the crazy, filthy dwarf circumstances had brought into her life and gave him a quick hug. "You're irrepressible, you know that?" She grinned. "And a _hell_ of a lot of fun."

"When you get back, you can explain the first part to me!" Salvador raised his launchers. "We'll draw him in! Get ready to jump, Lil!"

Lilith nodded. "Put your arm over my shoulder, Maya. This'll be easier if we're actually touching."

"Right." Maya threw her left arm over Lilith's shoulder and pulled her SMG. "Anything else I can do?"

"Just start running when I do," Lilith said tightly. "And keep shooting once we're up there!" she shouted at the guys. "It's big enough that you probably won't hit us, and we really don't want this thing to get to wise the fact we're running around on him! Ready?!"

Five hunters wielding six launchers took aim. Krieg tossed a thumbs-up in Maya's direction. "You powdered your cockatiel for the ribcage slaughter!"

Maya grinned. "FIRE!"

The rockets streaked across the sky and slammed into the rakk, drawing its attention once more. It wheeled around, soaring towards them like a living thunderstorm, until...

"NOW!"

Lilith and Maya sprinted forward. Lilith's tattoo's glowed, spreading into her eyes, across her arm, into _Maya's_ body, and with a brilliant flash-

the two women tumbled out of the air, landing on hard, rubbery, and very unstable rakk flesh.

Maya staggered and dropped to one knee, but Lilith's teleport had put them more or less at the center of the creature's back. "At least we won't fall off!" Maya shouted. The wind from the creature's flight was even worse than the downdraft. "Nice landing sp- are you alright?!"

Lilith was noticeably pale, and a lot of her weight was hanging on Maya for support. "I'm...fine," she managed. "I've just never done that before."

"You teleported a _city!_"

"While hopped up on Eridium!" Lilith shot back. "This one was cold turkey!" She pulled free of Maya's grasp. "Do it! Phaselock this thing!"

Maya pushed away her doubts and closed her eyes, focusing. She _could_ feel the rakk's mind, the constructed lifeform's 'instincts', but... "It's no good!" she yelled. "I still can't break in! Not unless-" she opened her eyes. "I need to get to the head!"

As the rakk beat its wings, Lilith saw it was swinging around to take another run at their friends below. "Better get there fast!"

* * *

"I am so _sick_ of giant monsters!" Axton roared. "Terramorphous, Voracidous, Mongzilla, the freakin' _Warrior,_ and now this rakk thing?!" He fired another ineffective burst at the circling monstrosity. "I'd rather be facing the hordes of Digistruct Peak! Alone! With a _spoon!_"

"Shoulda been there for Varmothra!" Salvador shouted back. He had dropped his rocket launcher and switched to dual miniguns. "He was fun! And we were in the air that time!"

"Oh yeah, a bullet-proof, flame spewing, grenade launching mega-varkid! He's all yours every time, Sal!" Axton reached to his ECHO and felt his turret deck resolve into his hand, pulled it back to throw... and stopped. He stared at the turret platform like he'd never seen it before. "Oh, man, would that work?"

Krieg stared in disbelief as Axton suddenly turned and sprinted away from them. "He wore a yellow ribbon?!"

"I need to check something!" Axton shouted back. "Just give me a second!"

Axton sprinted to the control center for the Peak and practically broke down the door getting in. Moxxi spun away from the control panel she was working on and frowned in confusion at him. "Shouldn't you be out there, trying to kill that thing?"

"Tannis!" Axton half-gasped, half-shouted. "Idea! Circuits!"

Tannis barely spared him a glance before returning to her work. "Really, if you're not going to make sense, don't try and distract us," Tannis sniffed, typing furiously on a keyboard. "We have enough to worry about right now."

"And I think I can _help_ with that!" Axton slammed his turret deck down next to her. "My turret has a Hecker circuit reintegrator. What can you do with that?"

"_That _infernal piece of technology!" Tannis exploded. "Completely unreliable, highly temperamental, and totally unworthy of the praise it receives from the fringe! Not mention that the system is active right now!"

"And what would happen if you _put_ this _highly_ _untrustworthy_ piece of tech into an _active system_?" Axton prodded.

Moxxi stopped her work and turned, listening intently.

"At best, it would disrupt the focusing arrays of the Digistruct pods, destabilizing the construct and rendering it highly vulnerable," Tannis sniffed. "At worst, the entire construct could explode!"

Axton and Moxxi glanced at each other, then sprang into action. "I'll need a minute to get the deck open-"

"That's okay, sugar, _I_ need a minute to find the right line to insert the device-"

Tannis watched them in befuddlement for a second, then the light dawned. "Oh." She moved over to Axton's side. "Make sure you disconnect the power source in your turret first, you don't want to shock yourself."

Axton spared her half a grin and keyed his ECHO. "Hang on guys! We're working on something new!"

A sonic blast rocked the building, and the sound of gunfire resounded over the ECHO channel. [Make it fast!]

* * *

"Hey, Lilith!" Maya yelled. "What am I supposed to _do _with this thing once I've seized control?! You never told me that part of your crazy plan!"

"Find some way to turn it to our advantage!" Lilith shouted over the wind. "And I think we're on _your_ crazy part now!"

Running up the rakk had proved impossible. Between a thirty mile an hour headwind and the constant undulations of the creature beneath them, crawling to its head was turning out to be the only way forward.

Maya pulled herself forward another few feet, and as she put her hand back in contact with the rakk's head, she felt something resonate deep in her mind. "Here!" she shouted. "We've reached it's brain!"

"Okay! Get ready!" Lilith's tattoos flared, and power coursed along her arms. "I've never tried this before!" she warned. "I don't know how long I'll be able to hold it!"

"That makes two of us!" Maya yelled back. "Let's do this fast!"

Lilith nodded and focused her power. The energy in her hands formed a small sphere, pulsing with light. Lilith pressed the energy into the rakk's head, grabbed the edges with her mind, and, with a cry of effort, _pulled_.

The sphere widened into a portal, and suddenly Maya was staring at the rakk's exposed brain.

"_Hurry!_" Lilith's voice was strained to breaking.

Maya's tattoos flashed, and she stabbed her arm into the rakk's brain, burying it up to the elbow. The body of the creature shuddered, the wings hesitated, and for a second, everything went silent. Then...

"I've got it!" Maya yelled. She noticed something out of the corner of her eye... "And I think I know what to do with it!" The light on her arm pulsed, and the rakk began to turn towards the black ship, still guarded by its energy field.

"Maaaya..." Lilith's grip was weakening. "I... can't hold this much longer..."

"You've got to!" Maya shouted. "I just need to get us aimed!" The rakk's head was coming into line with the ship.

The portal's edges were four inches from Maya's arm and closing.

"Ok, here we go..." Maya whispered. "Shriek!"

The rakk's devastating sonic blast slammed into the energy field. The shields flickered wildly, trying to stabilize themselves.

"Oh, no you do _not_!"

The rakk blasted again, twice, three more times. With each shriek, the shields grew more and more unstable, until, with one final blast, the field shattered like glass, the energy scattering and dissipating into nothingness.

"They're down!"

"_Get clear!_" Lilith yelled, her voice agonized.

Maya yanked her arm free of the rakk's brain just as Lilith's portal collapsed. She examined the fluid covering her arm with distaste. "Simulated or not, this is just _nasty_."

"At least... you've still got it," Lilith gasped. "A second slower and my portal would've cut it off." She tried to stand and fell into a half-sitting, half-collapsed position.

"Are you alright?" Maya asked, worried. "That looks like it took everything you had."

"I've got enough left to get us into that ship," Lilith said grimly. "Let's go get Gaige."

"One thing first." Maya switched on her ECHO. "Guys, I've lost control of the rakk, but we got the shields down! We're making a run for Gaige!"

[Go for it, _chica!_ Axton's working on something down here! If it pays off, it'll take care of Rodakk for us!]

"Got it!" Maya switched off. "You heard him, Lil! Let's get outta here!" She looped her arm under Lilith's and pulled her up. "It looks like there's a door! Aim for that!"

Lilith didn't answer. She just clenched her jaw and focused her eyes on the open hatch, straining with all her mind and will. Almost reluctantly, the air filled with purple energy, building steadily in brightness until there was a brilliant flash-

The ground under Maya's feet was stable again. And it was metal. "You did it!"

"I'm so... glad..." Lilith's legs sagged as she lapsed into unconsciousness.

"Lilith!" Maya caught her partner's weight and eased her to the deck. "Lilith, can you hear me?" Maya checked her over with growing concern. Lilith's skin was clammy, her breathing shallow and rapid. "I don't understand this, what is going-"

"Uhhhh..."

For a second, Maya thought Lilith was waking up, but the other Siren was still unconscious. Half expecting an attack, Maya panned her gun around the room, looking for the source of the moan. The room didn't offer much cover. It looked like some kind of workshop with an empty table in the center. On the floor near the end of the table, Maya caught a glimpse of a shock of red hair- "_Gaige!_"

Gaige was lying on the ground a little ways back from the table, a strange metal device on her head. Maya checked to make sure Lilith was still breathing, then moved to her other friend. She pulled Gaige into a sitting position and removed the metal headgear. "Gaige, are you alright? Can you hear me?"

"Uh... yeah, yeah, I'm awake, Mom..." Gaige's eyes fluttered open and focused on Maya's face. "_Maya!_" She clamped her arms around Maya's neck. "Oh, I'm so glad you're here! Thanks for ignoring my message and coming after-" she broke off and looked at the door. "One! Did you get him?! Last I saw he was crashing in a buzzard!"

"Easy, easy," Maya soothed. "Zero's fighting- did you call him _One ?_"

"It's what he calls himself," Gaige said, pushing herself up. "He kidnapped me to-" she caught sight of Lilith. "_Lilith!_" Gaige dropped next to the prone Siren. "Who did this?!"

"I think she did it to herself," Maya admitted. "We had to do some _weird_ stuff with our powers, and for some reason it really tapped her out. Maybe it has something to do with what she went through with Jack, but I'm not sure." She eyed Gaige's robotic arm. "Can you summon Deathtrap? Get him to carry her down?"

"I've got a better idea," Gaige said. "Help me carry her forward. One has some medical equipment on board we might be able to use."

Maya hesitated. "Are you sure that's safe?" she asked. "We'd be using a known enemy's equipment. How do we know he doesn't have it rigged?"

"He used it on me," Gaige pointed out. "Besides, can you heal her faster than a state-of-the-art piece of medical equipment?"

"No," Maya finally admitted. "You grab her feet, I'll take her shoulders. Which way are we going?"

"Through the door on the right and all the way back," Gaige instructed, picking up Lilith's feet. "You said everyone is here?"

"Yes," Maya confirmed. "Zero's fighting his brother, but he used the projectors to create a giant rakk. Everyone else is trying to take care of that." Maya frowned as she saw Gaige's cut-up right forearm. "Are you sure you're alright? He didn't hurt you?"

"What, this?" Gaige jerked her head at the cuts. "It's nothing that won't heal on its own. Here, open that door behind you."

They had reached the end of the short hallway. Maya pressed a few switches on a keypad, and the door slid open, revealing the medical chamber Gaige had woken up in. "Here we go," Gaige said, laying down Lilith's feet and checking the console. "Umm... it's good, the system's in standby." She entered a few commands, and the lid swung open with the hiss of hydraulics. "Just put her in and it'll do a scan, then recommend a treatment option."

"Good," Maya said, easing Lilith into the chamber. "Once she's set, let's see if we can find the cockpit. If there's any chance we can get this ship flying, maybe we can use it to our advantage." She smiled a little. "Too bad Tina's not in here."

"Tina?" Gaige gave her a puzzled look while typing on the medical chamber's keypad. "Why would Tina- ha!" The chamber sealed itself and began to run a diagnostic on Lilith. "Here we go. With any luck, the computer can tell us..." she trailed off as the results began to appear on the screen. "Uh...Maya? Can you read this and make sure I'm not crazy?"

Maya frowned. "Why?" she asked, moving around to Gaige's side. "Too technical or..." she trailed off. "No _way_."

* * *

Salvador whistled appreciatively as the rakk blasted at the ship's defensive fields, hammering the energy barrier with sonic force. "Maya's actually _controlling_ that thing? _Senorita's_ got some real chops."

"There go the shields!" Mordecai shouted, pointing. The barrier flickered, pulsed, and shattered, leaving the ship exposed.

Maya's voice crackled over the ECHO. [Guys, I've lost control of the rakk, but we got the shields down! We're making a run for Gaige!]

"Go for it, _chica!_" Salvador yelled. "Axton's working on something down here! If it pays off, it'll take care of Rodakk for us!"

[Got it!] The line went dead.

Kreig looked at Salvador, puzzlement in his visible eye. "Rodakk?"

Salvador shrugged. "What, doesn't a big guy like that deserve a nickname?"

"Whatever you wanna call him, he's coming back!" Mordecai warned. "Get ready to-"

The rakk shrieked again, and the blast sent Mordecai flying. Salvador fired off a salvo of rockets, but the rakk seemed to have learned from past experiences. It shrieked again, targeting the rockets themselves. The projectiles exploded harmlessly, and the rakk unleashed a rapid salvo of blasts at the hunters below.

Salvador was thrown off his feet and crashed into a wall. Krieg managed to dodge the first wave, but was caught in the trailing edge of the second, then slammed by the full force of the third. The rakk circled, wailing in fury and challenge.

"Uhhhh..." Salvador pushed himself up, wiped blood out of his eye, and keyed his ECHO. "Ax... I think it's angry again... how we doin' in there?"

"Hang on!" Axton turned over to Moxxi. "How close are we?!"

"I've managed to get power cut off from the main lines!" Moxxi started pulling a panel off one of the control computers. "We need to install the circuit in here, on the card labeled AA-214. Once it's in, I'll reactivate the mains, and, with any luck..."

"The big guy out there dies," Axton finished, peering into the computer. A thousand blinking light stared back at him. "Which one is it?!"

"Allow me," Tannis said, sliding up. "I installed this entire system, I remember each and every... here we are!" She deftly removed one of the cards. "Now, let me see your reintegrator."

Axton sighed, but handed the small, oddly shaped device over. "Is this going to fry the chip? I know this was my idea, but I'd hate to go down to one turret."

A rapid salvo of sonic blasts rattled the building again, sending part of the ceiling crashing to the floor.

"Never mind, just DO it!"

Tannis pulled out a small pair of cutting pliers, and delicately snipped out the connections for an existing chip on the board. Just as quickly, she slipped the Hecker circuit on to the board, and with an equally delicate series of actions, twisted the remaining contacts around the new chip. "Ah, how nostalgic! I haven't had to do an on the fly field realignment since-"

"Just PUT IT IN!" Moxxi yelled.

"Well!" Tannis sniffed haughtily, but she slid the modified card back into its slot. "Installation complete. You may return power to this line."

Axton scrambled for the control board. "Choke on this, skagsucker," he growled.

_Click._

* * *

Salvador turned one hazy eye towards the circling rakk. He didn't think he could move fast enough to dodge its blast this time. He watched as the creature opened its mouth-

But instead of a lethal sonic wave, only a sort of awkward, confused squawk emerged, harmless and directionless. The rakk's body twisted in midair, and the energy tracing over its body scattered like static in a bad communication.

"He... _did_ it!" Salvador crowed, dragging himself up. "Mordy, Krieg, get up! We've got our chance!"

The three dazed, staggered fighters hauled themselves upright one more time. "Give it everything you've got," Mordecai said grimly. "We're not gettin' another shot at this one!"

"Just _watch _me bring the party!" Salvador bellowed.

"Their cruisers can't repel firepower of THIS magnitude!" Krieg roared.

One final burst of rockets streaked towards the crippled rakk, targeted dead center of its warped, disrupted body. The rockets exploded against its skin, and this time, sent chunks of digistructed flesh raining down across the mountain. The rakk wailed in agony and started to fall, the colossal wings halting mid-flap. It plummeted for half a second, then, in a blaze of light and sound_-_

_ detonated._

* * *

[It's a little like playing spot the difference.]

[Next week, the brothers duel. As ever, thanks for reading.]


	15. 0100001001110010011011110111010001101000

Zero ignored the digistruct pods activating all around him. He ignored the rakk as it solidified into reality. He even managed to keep his footing as the beast took off. All his attention was focused on the targeting blip that represented his brother.

Zero slammed to a halt as One crashed to the ground in a kneeling crouch, landing on the shore of the small lake, stealth suit smoking and charred, but functionally undamaged. He rose up slowly, glaring at Zero. After miles and years, my brother, One will finally kill the other. His sword flashed into existence. You failed to slay me before. Now I shall even the score By rending your body asunder.

In our first battle, I had no grudge against you, Zero said. _That _is why you lived. He shook his head, drawing his own blade. This time, you've harmed mine. This time, you have earned my wrath. He reached behind his back, out of One's sight. This time, you will _die._

Zero flung a grenade with his left hand, aiming for One's head. One slashed the projectile in half, the explosion deflecting harmlessly off his shields. Zero was half a step behind his fastball, his sword crashing down in a vicious slash.

One parried the strike and launched his own, narrowly missing as Zero ducked the swing. Steel clashed against steel again and again as the brothers dueled.

I've greatly improved my skill In the art of making a kill, One hissed, pressing his attack. I know all of your tricks! Your worthless antics-

Then I can expect A greater challenge this time? Zero dropped to his side and kicked upward, impacting One's chest and throwing him back. Quite satisfying! He flipped into the air, cloaking and hurling a handful of kunai.

Take care in what you desire! One wove a wall of steel in the air, slapping aside the daggers with his blade. _This _'challenge' will make you expire! As he struck down the last kunai, he threw out his left hand. Your cloak, not your ally. You cannot hide from my eye. His fingers seized something in the air, and Zero appeared, suspended by his throat in One's tightening grip. Feel my ire! One slammed Zero into the ground, smashing him into the dirt again and again.

So you _have_ improved. As One prepared to slam him into the ground once more, Zero swung his legs upward, wrapping them around One's neck. At the same time, he coiled his arms around One's grasping hand. But you're still too weak, brother! With a fierce wrench, Zero heaved at One's arm.

One's arm bent backward at the elbow with a metallic, grinding _snap_, and his fingers opened reflexively. Zero dropped out of his grip and stabbed upward, his blade aimed at One's chest-

One parried with his good arm, knocking Zero's blade off course, then went into a flurry of slashes, forcing Zero onto the defense. Breaking my arm Won't spare you from harm! With an ultrasonic roar of fury, One swung at Zero hard enough to send him flying into the canyon wall.

Zero crashed into the rock and fell to the ground, dazed.

One took advantage of the lull. He tossed his sword into the air and seized his damaged left arm. A violent heave snapped the elbow back into joint, and he caught his falling sword with his now-functioning left hand. It seems you disappoint me this time. He stalked towards Zero, halting as he stood over the slumped form of his brother. Now you die for your crime! He slashed downward, blade trailing energy-

The sword passed harmlessly through Zero's body.

And still _gullible_.

Zero reappeared as his hologram faded, lashing out from behind One. His blade slashed across One's back, leaving a shallow, sparking line of damage.

Agh! One spun around, blocking the next strike a millimeter from his helmet. Damn your tricks!

Impressive, brother! Zero shouted, pressing his attack in a blaze of light. You didn't survive this long When last we battled!

I've had two years to learn your style, One snarled, striking aside the blows. Your sword, your skill, and all of your guile!

Good! Zero lashed out, scoring another shallow cut, this one on One's right side. By your obsession You've learned what it truly means To seek a challenge!

It was _never _about the challenge, monster! One spun into a flip kick that connected with Zero's shoulder and sent him rolling backward, throwing dust and debris into the air around them. It was _always_ about justice for father!

He was not worthy Of the devotion you show! Zero rolled onto his feet and lunged out of the dust cloud, attacking in a blaze of blue light. We were just _projects!_ When I showed my will, He declared me a failure And moved on to you!

Which is why you hated him!

I hated his goals! Zero redoubled his attack, forcing One into a retreating defense. Hated his impositions, And his presumptions!

One leapt backward, trying to get some maneuvering room. He raced through a security gate, jumping past a fragmented cardboard statue and into an area of tiered rocks. We were his creations, his _sons!_ He had a right to expect certain actions!

His goals were weak-willed For what he had created! Zero leapt after One, practically flying down the staggered canyon walls. _Look_ at us, brother! Look at what we _are_! We, alone, are _limitless!_ Zero reached the bottom and lunged at One, resuming his onslaught. But what did _he_ want?! What was his pathetic goal! Zero kicked out, his boot impacting One's chest and throwing him back. Unworthy of us!

He wanted to heal the galaxy's inhabitants! To serve with your medical talents!  One charged at Zero and regained the offensive, attacking with such fury that he actually slipped under Zero's guard and scored a direct hit on Zero's body. Why was helping save lives Worthless in your eyes?! Their swords collided, sending a cascade of sparks raining around them. What was the source of your petulance?!

There was no CHALLENGE! Zero threw all his strength into his blow, crashed through One's defense, and hurled him through the wall of a neraby building. All life wants to _keep_ living! Healing is simple! He raced forward, trying to reach One before he could catch his wind again. But to kill something That is trying to _avoid_ Its own extinction_?_ He brought his sword down on One. _That_ is a worthyApplication of our skills! This battle is _proof!_

One caught the overhead strike just before it would have cut his head in two. You have always been a delusional fool, he growled. Always been senseless, vain, and cruel! Humans are worthy of serving, Their lives worth preserving, You egotistical tool! He threw Zero back and regained his footing. And humans often sound their own knell, Ending a life for not more than a yell! They'd slaughter a nation With no hesitation! They don't need _us_ to kill them, as well!

Then you explain Brick! Zero roared, striking again. Was _he _not worthy of life?! You _dissected _him!

And you saved your friend's life! One shot back. Tell me _that_ wasn't a challenge, him being under your knife!

The impact of One's words hit Zero harder than any of his physical blows. Are you telling me... You _deliberately_ maimed Brick, But left him alive?! Fury overcame Zero, and he laid into his attack with more vehemence than ever. In the hopes I would Grow to respect the challenge Of _medical__work?!_

Not bad for a split second decision, was it, brother?! One took advantage of Zero's rage, turning aside his blows easily and taking back the offensive. How did it feel, to save the life of another?!

I wasn't alone, Zero snarled. He only survived because My friends were there first. If not for their work, Your cruel lesson would have failed! 

But they proved my secondary lesson! One knocked Zero's sword out of position and kicked off his chest, sending Zero skidding backwards and dropping him to one knee. We _need_ a human connection! If we don't work with their kind, We never will find The proper course and direction!

You are a _madman!_ Zero hurled a dagger at One's chest, but wasn't able to rise from his crouch yet. Our father is _dead!_ We are the end of his line! There can _be_ no more!

And that's where you're most wrong of all! One swatted aside the dagger, but didn't attack. He pointed to the ship parked on the mesa. The girl will answer the call. Despite an initial setback, I believe she can find the right track. He pointed his blade at Zero. Father's death need not be our downfall.

Gaige? Zero laughed, getting to his feet. She may have the skill, But not the experience Or the desire. She'd never create The family you still crave, One that shares _your_ will! Zero lunged again. And I won't allow A murderous psychopath To steal Gaige away!

One blocked the strike and leaned into it, locking the crossed swords between them. Then once and for all, we are finished, he said disgustedly. Our mutual hatred will never diminish. You left Father to rot, Made his dreams come to naught, And would condemn our family to vanish. With a surge of strength, he threw Zero into the air.

Zero crashed near a large archway into the next area, unable to even turn his fall into an off-balance landing. He forced himself to roll painfully onto his side and and stared at One. _Where did _that _strength come from?_

I am _done _trying to convince you, assassin. Up to now, I have shown you compassion. He strode towards Zero, the lines in his suit beginning to glow with a sinister red light. But I will no longer work To make you convert. The light seemed to flow across One's body, running down his arm and into his sword. Your death will bring great satisfaction. He leapt into the air, blade over his head and arcing towards Zero.

Zero just barely rolled out of the way. One's knee landed exactly where his head had been, leaving a three inch pit in the ground. Zero flipped backwards, through the archway and to his feet, too stunned to even raise his weapon. He was still staring at the light on One's body in disbelief. Substantial upgrade. What have you done to yourself? An ominous possibility occurred to him. This is _Father's _work.

You life was one final detail That Father wished to curtail, One said, examining his blade's new color casually. Before his last breath He charged me with your death. He placed his sword against the thick metal and stone of the archway. And he made certain I'd have the strength to prevail. Almost delicately, he slashed through stone arch and the metal tracks that normally held the steel security door in place. It didn't look impressive...until Zero realized it had been done with the _blunt_ side of his sword.

Zero tightened his grip and raised his sword. You are wrong, brother. Your death, my greatest challenge. :) You are here for _me._

We will _see!_

One charged.

Zero had battled countless opponents, on and off Pandora. Some had been stronger, but none had ever been faster.

Until now.

One rained down a flurry of attacks so fast, it was impossible to block them all. Zero retreated slowly, concentrated on stopping the most critical blows, counting on his shields to protect his less vital areas as he searched for an opening.

It wasn't working. Zero's shields began to steadily drain, their energy weakening under One's relentless assault. One continued to press him back, towards the platform that dropped into the next area. His blade slipped through Zero's defense again, and Zero felt a stab of pain in his side, then another in his leg. One struck again, and Zero's shield strength dropped to nothing-

Zero's shield erupted in a wave of fire, disrupting One's volley of attacks. Zero lashed out, throwing One's sword sideways.

"_Welcome! To my-_"

The ammunition vending machine exploded as Zero deflected One's blade into it. Zero tried to strike into the opening, but One had become too fast for him to slip a hit into that gap. Their blades collided, and One threw all his strength against the block. Zero dug in and tried to push back, but he was being forced inexorably towards the cliff edge. In a last ditch effort to regain the offensive, Zero jumped, using the crossed swords as leverage. He spun into a somersault, and at the peak of his jump kicked out at One's head-

An iron grip caught Zero's leg before his kick could impact, and One threw him off the cliff.

Zero crashed into the ground and lay stunned, staring up at the sky. Before he could recover, One leapt after him, sword glinting.

_Die!_

One slammed to the ground. His sword lanced through Zero's chest... and Zero flickered.

The holographic body vanished as the real Zero swung with all his strength and speed. With One's sword buried in the ground up to the hilt, there was no way he could block with it... so One simply caught the blade. The same trick? Pathetic.

One kicked out, slamming Zero with enough force to send him flying uncontrollably into the rock formation in the center of the area. And now comes the end of 'Zer0', One sneered, rising. A life misspent in pursuit of his ego. He pulled his own sword from the ground and cast Zero's away. Before causing me harm, You die alone and unarmed And the sum of your life is... nothing. He started forward in anticipation of the kill... then stopped in confusion.

Zero was laughing.

Didn't learn a thing About Pandora, did you, My foolish brother? he taunted. There's _always_ a gun.

Zero pulled his sniper rifle and rapid fired every round in the clip with vicious accuracy. One blocked the bullets, but before he could move forward, Zero had reloaded and was firing again, advancing as he did so. Eighty-seven bazillion Guns on this planet! Zero yelled, reloading and firing a third salvo. Did you really think I'd limit myself to a Simple, short-ranged _sword?!_ With an eye-baffling burst of speed, Zero lunged at One. That said, I do like The added advantages Of a _bayonet!_

One struck aside the last bullet and moved to intercept Zero's wickedly curved sniper bayonet, but Zero didn't settle for a straight attack that could be blocked so easily. Instead, he threw himself into a lightning fast spin, the sniper rifle's bayonet crashing against One's sword repeatedly in an explosion of sparks. One staggered back at the rapid collision of weapons, and Zero pressed his advantage. How hilarious! You just set off my trap card! Your death approaches!

Your tricks won't save you! One roared. Your life is _through!_ Breaking free of Zero's relentless attack, he raised his sword over his head and brought it down in a savagely powerful two-handed attack.

You're the stronger one. Zero caught the blade in the gap between his bayonet and the sniper rifle body. But I'm the more _devious._

Strength is all I _need_ for you! One stabbed downward, and his blade slashed through the frame of Zero's rifle. The blade clattered to the ground, freeing One's sword and leaving Zero holding half a gun.

Zero tossed it away without hesitation and drew a pair of bladed pistols. Two guns, bitch! He unloaded both handguns, then unleashed a volley of slashes.

Gah! One staggered back, a pair of diagonal cuts tracing across his chest. Still too weak, brother! A downward strike shattered the pistol blades.

Zero leapt back and pulled a bladed SMG. _Shut up,_ He fired a short burst at One's faceplate, then hurled the gun at him. The pronged weapon embedded in his chest and exploded, sending him reeling.

Hey, stand in front of this! Zero lunged and skewered One with a bayoneted assault rifle, then rolled under One's counterattack.

A noticeably _slower_ counterattack. The lights on One's suit were beginning to flicker as he absorbed more and more damage.

Zero pressed his advantage. He grabbed the severed sniper bayonet, and plunged it straight through One's back. My blade is thirsty!

Argh! One gave a wild, desperate swing.

Zero leapt over the off-balance attack, landing in front of One. He drew his final weapon, a bladed shotgun, and rammed it into One's stomach. Murder time.

A horrible, echoing wail resounded from overhead. The sound was so loud, it drew the focus of the brothers skyward... to the digistructed rakk crashing down on them.

It exploded ten feet from the ground.

The blast threw Zero and One away from each other before Zero could pull the trigger. Zero slammed into the wall near the door, One into the canyon edge. Neither moved as the explosion died down and the rakk faded back into nothingness.

For a long, painful moment, nothing moved. Then...

You... nearly had me, through skill and trickery. One dragged himself to his feet with agonizing slowness, pulling the various blades from his wounds. But the twist of fate has denied you victory. He started towards the still unmoving Zero, clutching his stomach wound with his left hand, but kept a deathgrip on his sword with his right. Father's spirit watches his favored son, And so this day _I_ have won, Despite your vaunted weaponry. His left hand dropped to the sword as well, and he crouched down, preparing to spring at his unconscious brother one last time. The girl will build the future. All her labors I will nurture. By _any_ methods needed, Father's work will be completed, And thus his dreams earn structure. The lines in his suit began to glow red once more. But you... on this merciless world, you take your last breath. And none in the galaxy will mourn your death! He leapt into the air, sword raised.

Zero regained consciousness just in time to see One coming straight at him, blade flashing. He couldn't move, had no weapons left to block. He stared helplessly as his brother began the downward arc of his jump-

And slammed to a halt in midair.

One's sword dropped from his hands and hit the ground with a _clang_.

For an impossible second, both brothers stared in confusion. A hole had appeared dead center of his chest, the sky and canyon wall clearly visible, the black fluid of One's lifeblood leaching slowly out of it.

One grabbed at the nothingness that had pierced him, and the air began to flicker. The emptiness dropped away like a cloak, and something was revealed.

A figure was in front of One, kneeling on the ground. Its body was all black and silver metal, with the appearance of metal muscle tissue stretched across it. The head was almost skull-like, but had enough metal flesh to give it some definition.

Its left arm was lanced out, skewering his chest.

_You..._ One gasped. How... _why?_

Because you moved me with your memories, brother, the android said. I learned your life, your history... and your plans for our legacy. Almost gently, it laid One on the ground. I saw all that you would do, and I said _no_. With a sharp wrench, Zero's rescuer pulled its arm out of One's chest.

A burst of sparks and black fluid erupted from the hole. One's body seized, convulsed... and went limp. The lights on his suit flickered... and went dark.

One's final act was to turn his head to Zero. In his last moment of life, he showed all the hatred he had for his assassin brother.

**}:(**

Zero pushed himself into a sitting position, bracing against the wall for support. "And... just who are you?" he asked, speaking aloud for the first time in what felt like weeks. "Do you want to kill me, too? Have I done you wrong?"

"Would I have rushed so rapidly to your rescue if I had deemed you duly deserving of death?" the android asked, turning to face him. "No, my sensibly suspicious sibling, _your_ life looms lengthy." It offered its right hand to Zero. "_He_ wanted to call me Two, a truly terrible title. For now..." For the first time, it seemed uncertain. "...is it sufficient to say I'm your sister?"

Zero looked at its- _her-_ hand for a second, then took it and pulled himself up. "Yes."

* * *

[FYI, the actual title of this chapter is 0100001001110010011011110111010001101000011001010111001000100111011100110010000001100100011101010110010101101100. FFN wouldn't let me put the whole thing.]

[Next week, things begin to conclude. Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you at the last.]


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